This was going to be a blog about Iran and nuclear power. Fossil fuels are running out. Merikaland just secured all the Iraqi oil for the West. Even Britain is starting to realise maybe we ought to have got started building more nuke reactors 5 or 10 years ago. If there was a powerful organisation that wanted to completely crush and oppress a country like say Iran, it could threaten to go to war with it if it tried to develop freedom from oil…
But there is a more pressing matter. The most amusing bit of “usability design” I have seen in a long time:
Shietons are sub-atomic particles of bad luck that streak around the universe at hundreds of thousands of miles an hour. Like alpha particles gamma rays, shiteons can pass through the Earth and everything on it with very little influence. Unlike alpha particles gamma rays, shiteons tend to accumulate in vast clouds, millions of miles across. You will notice if the Earth passes through a shiteon cloud because everything will go wrong, usually you’ll have a spot of bad luck, then you’ll have a couple of days where everything breaks and all your efforts to fix things only make things worse. Then, seemingly inexplicably, everything comes right again. The remote starts working, the cat comes back, you find your chequebook. This is the Earth passing out of the shiteon cloud again.
The best identified strategy for dealing with a shiteon storm is “perseverance”. This is mid way between trying and giving up. Trying too hard to fix your situation only exposes more activities to possible shiteon strikes and usually exacerbates the situation. Giving up just lets entropy take over and you end up with an unholy mess to dig yourself out of after the “shite-storm”. Perseverance, continually looking for small, correct things to do, and doing them, is by far the most successful approach under “shite” conditions.
I sat on my Palm back at the work Christmas party. A Palm being a small but expensive little computer as opposed to a tree or an anatomical part. The screen fractured. I’d only had it for a month or two, but fortunately it had been the replacement for an identical one that had died mysteriously with an intact screen. So I switched the screen over and was happy as larry until I dropped that one face down in the car and cracked the screen. So I got another one off ebay. Last week I ordered a screen protector for it (the stylus can be a bit scratchy). It arrived on Friday, I fitted it, and by Sunday morning I’d managed to crack the screen again. So now I have 3 dead Palms, all with broken screens, all with so-called “screen protector”s. Hrrmph.
I’m considering a file-o-fax.
Having offered to help a local doctor with his computer problems, and mentioned my suspected fractured left hand, I received some insider advice.
- show up at casualty in the early morning when there will be loads of doctors and hardly any patients
- tell them you did it within the last week
- tell them you couldn’t get an appointment with GP
- say you’ve been taking pain killers but it kept you up at night
Although everybody I’ve spoken to agrees that an X-ray is the only sensible way forward, this is the only time I’ve had it spelled out how to actually get one in a timely fashion!
edit: I didn’t quite fib this much. I did show up in the morning, and got seen instantly - so a good tip there. Also you have to be careful as a “young” man to indicate that you didn’t get it by drunkenly punching your best mate in the face or similar. Said I did it just over a week ago, didn’t play up the pain angle, but did play up the affecting work, brushing teeth, etc. angle. Got an X-ray and there’s no fracture, so the answer is keep using it, put up with pain or take pain killers, and wait ages for it to get better…
Hurrah! House ownership is possibly worth the feeling of oppressive poverty it causes! I thought my bathroom and bedroom could do with having hooks on the doors, and now they do! I thought the kitchen cupboard doors ought to line up, and now they do! I thought the sink should be on the left and the drainer on the right, and now they are! I thought the lounge could do with a futon, now it has one! Likewise the bay tree has a pot…
“How about you Steve?”
“Huh?”
“What three celebrities would you put in your cupboard?”
“Uh…” *thinks* “am I allowed to feed them in this cupboard?”
“No, I mean-”
“Can they get out to go to the loo?”
“No, I mean-”
“Phil Collins, the guy from the Eels, and Van Morrison. They’re three people I’d like to see starve in their own shit.”
Apparently, that’s not what they had meant, but we then started a whole new game…
In other news, after grub with Rachael, Niall, and Sarah, we went to the jazz jam night at the Black Swan. It wasn’t quite as good as last time but was still very enjoyable. Got chatting to a bass player who drunkenly invited me to play percussion on a track on his band’s album currently in recording. I’ve given him my number in case it’s still a good idea when he’s sober. It’s sounding like the track is a more bossa nova than anything faintly cuban, so if I do get that call I might end up asking the local samba guys if they would do it. Either way it was cool to be asked!
In order to get a feeling for why software projects overrun, answer me this question: how long will it take you to find all the pieces of a jigsaw and assemble them?
Instantly of course you want to know: how many pieces? where are they hidden? in software we can know roughly how many pieces, and have some ideas where many of them are hidden. But that’s hardly enough to give a realistic estimate when we don’t know what the picture is.
Last night I got home thinking I knew how to make Pesto. I grabbed two gloves of garlic and some coarse salt and mashed ‘em up in a mortar with a pestle. Or in a pestle with a mortar. Then I plucked some fresh basil offa the plant, skipped the parsley cos the closest thing I had was coriander, ground in some black pepper, dribbled some olio olivio (I think all recipes should “dribble” oil rather than “drizzling” it,) chucked in some pine kernels and fresh-grated parmigiano and whisked it. And added some water and whisked it some more.
Half way through I’d had some doubts that this was right, so I went to the recipe book that I knew I’d read it in. Only it wasn’t there. So I went to the other recipe book it must be in, and it wasn’t. The only thing close I could find was a marinade but it didn’t include parmesan and I was sure the recipe I’d read had had that in it.
I took the final mixture and spooned it over some steaming pasta tubesa, chucked on a smattering more black pepper and grated parmesan, and tucked in.
And my head exploded. Figuratively.
It wasn’t disgusting, but it was painful. Two raw cloves of garlic and fresh ground salt neatly marinaded my tongue and insides, and I can still smell my tongue from here, 18 hours and two small meals later.
Here: clicky is luke’s thing on the net. We’re experimenting with trackbacks/pingbacks.
That’s me deadline dealt with.
And on to a new, tight, we-reckon-it-might-be-possible-but-there-is-no-time-for-contingencies deadline.
As far as I can tell there are only Aleph-0 of these to come, so it’s infinitely better than it could have turned out.