Scatmania

This weekend Gareth and Bryn came over and we set up a computer lab in Claire and I’s living room and spent most of the weekend hacking Ruby and Perl code (in between segments of munching coder snacks, drinking beer, watching films at Troma Night, and, last night, barbequing food on Ynyslas beach). We made some great progress on a project that we’ve all been working on that was otherwise at risk of stalling: not only progress in coding, but also in setting goals and deadlines and in discussing implementation strategies that I’m sure have made the next stage of the project a lot clearer for all of us.

Claire, Binky and I got to Ynyslas first last night and ate some fantastic lamb burgers. Later, as Gareth drove up and came to join us (I was stood atop a dune to get advance warning of his approach), Claire and I buried Binky against the side of a dune, covering his face with an overturned disposable barbeque box and stacking other provisions around him. Gareth didn’t have a clue that he was there: “Where’re Bryn and Jimmy?” he asked when he arrived. “They didn’t come,” I replied. We sat around and got chatting and drinking and, after a while, I asked Gareth if he could pass me my mobile phone. “Where is it?” he asked. “Under that box,” I said, gesturing towards where Binky was so-well buried.

The look on Gareth’s face was priceless when he lifted the box. Mucho respect to Binks for managing to stay undetected underground for so long (despite having eyes full of sand and other irratating side-effects of being buried alive).

Pity. From a BBC report:

A young woman’s naked table-top dance in a cattle shed at the Royal Welsh Show has led to an official inquiry… One witness, who did not want to be named, said security guards rushed to the scene late on Tuesday, but had difficulty grabbing the woman because the water had made her skin slippery.

The Royal Welsh Show is certainly trying out some different entertainments these days. Last time I was there the highlight was the Dancing Diggers (which were great, it’s true, but they’re not strippers by any stretch of the imagination).

I really can’t stand Ann Coulter.

I mean, her book, “Godless: The Church Of Liberalism” (somebody sent me an e-copy, which saved me from the bad feeling I’d associate with helping shower her with royalties) was bad enough, but this…

She’s appeared on TV recently (video clip) to talk about the former US president, Clinton. Her claim? That the 42nd president’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky is evidence that Bill Clinton is homosexual.

Whoah, whoah… let’s roll that one back and hear it again, Ann.

Apparently his latent homosexuality is evidenced by his promiscuity. This is a fascinating turnaround of the old stereotype that “all homosexual people are promiscuous”: even it it were true, you can’t just invert causality to fit your arguments… unless you’re Ann Coulter. The argument works both ways for her - not only are all homosexual people promiscuous, but all promiscuous people are homsexual! One is left wondering, then, whether homosexuality is self-perpetuating - in her mind - as it’s promiscuity leads to greater homosexuality leads to further promiscuity. Oh wait: she only seems to see the world in black and white anyway.

If you watch the video right to the end, there’s another classic quote. Homosexuality isn’t actually a sexuality at all, claims Ann: it’s just narcissism to be attracted to somebody of the same gender: essentially masturbation. So, you homosexuals: be told - you’re not actually attracted to other men or other women - you’re merely attracted to yourself too much to appreciate people of the opposite sex.
[sighs]

Suppose I’d better stop ranting so much and get on with some work.

• The power keeps going off. It’s awfully hard to build software in the dark.
• I have a shedload of work to do and I’ve spent most of my day so far either cursing the aforementioned power cut or in meetings about how much more productive we could be (if, for example, we weren’t in meetings when I was busiest…).
• Our customers can’t tell the different between our mail server going down (which it hasn’t) and a power spike bricking their router. “Can you get to any websites? No: then might the problem be at your end?”

On the other hand, a good moment was when our visiting sales consultant dude gave me a copy of Who Moved My Cheese? and I responded by summarising the story in about 60 words, then providing an analysis of the virtues and the faults of the book. In hindsight, it might have been cooler to flick through the pages of the book, pretending to read it stupidly fast (Johnny Five-style), and then summarised it for him.

Better save this before the power goes again. Grr.

I love being me.

While paying for drinks at Thresher with a card I didn’t own, I persuaded the staff to talk me through the fundamentals of arming, disarming, and hypothetically evading their four alarm systems.

Disappointed with the shape of your turds? Bored with “sausage-shaped” shit? Why not treat yourself to a pack of 10 Turd Twisters? Inserted carefully into the anus, they allow you to mould your faeces into amusing and interesting shapes. They’re “one-size-fits-all”, dishwasher safe, and come with their own special Safe-T-Floss Retraction Cord, just in case they get embedded too deeply into your rectal cavity.

Plus, when you order, you get a free book, “How To Twist Your Turds.”

As I’ve said before, I don’t just jump onto every memeing bandwagon that crosses my path, but now and then, one comes along that really impresses me. This one is a ’smart’ personality test that attempts to define you by asking a series of questions… yadda yadda… but this one learns from it’s mistakes, and it’s getting pretty good.

take the ‘Smart’ Personality Test

Children Of Men, due for release this September, looks good. In the near future, all the women on Earth become infertile, and science is at a loss to explain why. By 2027, no children have been born in 18 years, and the future of humanity is bleak. There’s a trailer about, too. It all looks remarkabley well put-together.

But in the nearer future, I’m looking forward to seeing Thank You For Smoking, which a group of us are seeing at the Arts Centre tomorrow at 5:30pm (thanks for the reminder, Paul). It’s getting great reviews and it sounds great. Just so long as I can stop thinking of Aaron Eckhart as “that guy from The Core“… (damn, that film sucked)

Unusual dream last night. Gareth challenged me to a race: driving lorries (which fluctuated in size throughout the dream from mini-vans to huge artic’ trucks) along a dirt track somewhere up in the Welsh hills. Jon was his co-driver, and Bryn was mine, but somewhere along the way to the racecourse our vehicle broke down and by the time we’d repaired it, the other truck was way ahead: and we didn’t know the way. Bryn suggested, “Let’s take the Clarach road,” pointing up Gray’s Inn Road (for those not of Aber, this couldn’t be anything but the wrong way). I don’t remember much else of it, but I’m pretty sure we never got to the race.

I blame this dream on the heatwave we’ve been going through - which, thankfully, seems to be coming to an end now. The heat had given me a nasty headache by last night, so I knocked myself out with co-codamol and I suspect the strange dream was a side-effect of the drugs.

We watched the final episode, “Going Too Far”, of Excel Saga at Naruto Night last night. Added nothing to the plot, but well worth-seeing (as are all of the final episodes, actually… or the whole series, pretty much) for it’s crazy paedophilia-promoting, nudity-filled, blood-and-gore interpretation of the series. This - with it’s musical numbers, re-animation of the opening and closing sequences, and little re-use of animation - must have been the most expensive episode to make, which is terrifying considering that it never got screened on television.

Not only is it the coolest “hands on” tutorial to a programming language I’ve ever seen; it’s also (technologically) quite impressive as a web application, too. I’m talking about tryruby.hobix.com, a stunning tutorial in the Ruby programming language that’s simple enough for anybody to get started and doesn’t require you to install anything. Everything is done through your web browser into a virtual “irb” session.

If you’re a programmer with an interest in Ruby, or just a geek wannabe, it’s a must-see. Apologies if you’ve seen it before: I first saw it today.