Rejection

It's a funny business applying for academic jobs. Even after I've fixed myself up with something for next [academic] year (BCIS/DHS permitting), the jobs that I applied for back in December continue to dribble in with belated rejection letters, at the rate of one every week or so. At least the current batch are lying to me as blatantly as some did: these were personalized looking letters complimenting me on the strength of my application but sadly regretting that they were unable to invite me for interview -- and then the scanned signature of someone who'd clearly never actually looked at my application package.

What else is new and exciting? UK denizens should be aware that the Graveyard shift is back, albeit in a slightly curtailed, and fat-free form. For US readers, this can be enjoyed before dinner by listening live, or wherever you are in the world, it can be enjoyed before lunch, before tea and before dinner thanks to the listen again feature.

Some important McGuyver and Quinlanck news to follow, when I have enough time to fire up the image capture device. There was probably something else to pay attention to, but it's getting late and it's nearly time for the Daily Show. Abnormal service will be resumed as and when. Yesterday's mashed potatoes.

Everything in moderation

I was in a department store the other day (an "anchor store" of the mall complex, as my companion charmingly put it), and on the map of the store was a large section called "Moderate Sportswear". Gosh, I thought, I wonder where they put the immoderate sportswear?

Presumably "moderate sports" is some kind of riposte to "extreme sports". Have extreme sports become so mainstream now that they are assumed to be the norm, and everything else must be labelled to distinguish it?

Absolutely Unprecedented

According to the guardian, Richard Branson is to launch an unprecedented third attempt to run the lottery.

Could this be unprecedented because, the UK National Lottery, which started in 1994 was initially granted to Camelot, and the licence was renewed in 2000. So, er, this would only be the third time that it's come up for bidding.

I was literally spitting blood...

...after my visit to the dentist. Honestly, is it really necessary to attack my gums with a pointed stick? And how is it that I end up leaving the dentist with my teeth aching when they felt fine when I went in? Any answers, keep them to yourself.

Quick referrer log trawl before I go and see a man about some money. Someone looking for 'standard techniques' (could you be a little more vague please?) probably won't find any here. Someone else wants to know "What happened briths airport"[sic]? Dashed if I know. Our old friend is back looking for 'scissor truss pics' (still don't want to know, but thanks for your persistence). Plus a few more hits for phrases such as: "shrek fiona nude" and "gay pics of shrek nude". Time for a quick top five search terms of all time (Well, since records began last year) to illustrate what is on the mind of the typical internet user. If you like, think of this as my "greatest hits"

5. Goodness Gracious (14 hits)
"Oh, Doctor I'm in trouble", as Romana was heard to remark on more than one occasion.

4. Shrek (27 hits)
Almost all of these in conjunction with the keyword 'nude' or 'naked'. Is there some giant green ogre fetish that I'm not aware of?

3. Dervla (48 hits)
Often in conjunction with "Kerwin" and "nude", which shows that there is a larger fetish for naked misspelt celtic temptresses.

2. Diggerworld (87 hits)
Another erroneous spelling: people (including me) kept looking for "Diggerworld", a JCB-themed theme-park, when in fact we should be looking for "Diggerland". Can't help thinking that they should consider changing the name...

1. Milkshake (1067 hits)
My milkshake brings all the boys to my page. Or something like that. La-la la-la laa.

Adhered Adjective

An adhered adjective is an adjective that is stuck to a particular noun, usually because the person saying it is obliged to use those words in combination because they are reading from a script. Often the adhered adjective seems awkward in this combination, and it is only through repetition that we fail to notice it. Often heard whilst travelling, eg:

"Please do not leave packages unattended as this may lead to unnecessary security alerts".

Here, 'unnecessary' is the adhered adjective. Note the subtle implication here, that there may in the course of an ordinary day be a necessary security alert, but if you leave your bag of sandwiches next to platform 4, then it will cause an unnecessary secturity alert.

"A warm welcome to our OnePass members who are earning valuable air miles on this trip".

In this Continental greeting, the script tries vainly to emphasise the importance and value of the air miles, despite the fact that it takes you about 10 years of frequent jetsetting to earn anything like enough miles for a trip from Newark to JFK.

Anyone know any more adhered adjectives?

Boring Tech Stuff

Was going to post interesting observations on my european vacation, but can't be bothered to indulge you with them. Instead, I'll indulge myself with some tech rambling. I got hold of one of the highly sought-after Philips DVP642 DVD players this weekend, by the cunning ruse of going into WalMart on Friday afternoon and buying one. These machines have been hard to get hold of lately, due to a lot of interest in them on the internet. They are fairly cheap ($70) slimline DVD players, with two very nice features:

1) It plays MPEG and DivX movies burned onto DVD+R/+RW using standard burning software.
2) It becomes region free through entering a code on the remote.

Both of these features are very important to me. I don't like sitting in front of the computer to watch things, it isn't the same environment as watching TV. Yet, since I'm too lazy to get a VCR or be in at the right times, or if I want to watch old or foreign TV shows, then I download a lot of TV shows (a remarkably grey area, legally, but let's brush over that). Until recently, I've been using the Apex 1100 ($45 from WalMart in 2002), which can play MPGs only, but is not region free). The Apex is an amazing machine, and has played pretty much every file I've thrown at it over the last eighteen months. But a lot of things I want to watch are DivX, and I'm too lazy to convert them -- it hardly seems worth the effort. It also has a very good user interface: ability to pause, ffwd and rewind at up to 16x, and jump to any point in the file.

Perhaps surpisingly, the Philips interface is a little less nice. It does display up to 16 chars of the filename instead of 8 on the Apex, but going through the filelist takes longer -- it always seems to be reading from the disk instead of caching the directory listing. Ffwd and rewind work well enough, but only up to 8x, and direct point access also is a little more clunky than on the Apex (you have to enter 00:10 to jump to ten minutes in, even if the file is less than an hour long, and then press 'OK'). Peculiarly, there seems no way to display the length of the file, or time remaining.

Format-wise, it seems to cope pretty will with a large variety of DivX/Xvid/MPG versions. It baulks at WMV, but who wouldn't, and seemed to crash occasionally on some Xvid files. Also, because of the wide variety of codecs out there, it's not surprising that it occasionally runs into something that it can't handle: it didn't like one avi that had Xvid video but the Divx/WMA audio codec, and played the video without any sound. But it still succeeds on a large fraction of things I have tried on it, and played a 90minute movie last night without any problems.

Yes, it's not quite as universal as a modded Xbox with xbox media center would be, but that requires a lot more time, money, effort and swearing than the DVP642 that worked straight out of the box. The region free setting was also easy, and means that I can now enjoy my imported copies of A Very Peculiar Practice and The High Life, neither of which are likely to be release in Region 1 any time soon.

Am I dead?

To anyone worrying about my health due to the lack of blog entries lately -- can't you read? I quite clearly posted a calendar of my movements a fortnight ago, which showed that I wouldn't be around to take notes on the minutiae of life for a while. But I'm back from my trip to the Isle of Elba (which, trivia fans, is just a little south of the Isle of Lucy), refreshed, tired, energized and too lazy to do anything useful, hence am writing silly blog entries. Will probably add comments about Italian transport, social engineering and anything else that peturbs me later, but I've just got in to work, and it's nearly lunchtime. So, time to stop for lunch, obviously.

Where Am I?

First, a big F.U. to public internet services that block port 22 so I can't check my email on them. And you call yourself a library.

Now, more for my benefit than anyone else's, my itinerary for the next fortnight:

Sat: Maidstone London Oxford
Sun: Oxford London Maidstone
Mon: Maidstone Cambridge Stansted Rome
Tue: Rome Elba
Weds - Fri: Elba
Sat: Elba Rome Stanstead London
Sun: London Maidstone
Mon: Maidstone
Tue: Maidstone Dorking
Wed: Dorking Gatwick Newark NJ

It might be possible to contact me somewhere along the way, although for the above reasons email not so good, so phone may be more reliable.

Search me (volume 97)

Quick splutter with regards to some recent interesting search queries, ranked in order of my personal private preference

#1 nob lolly
#2 george formby the wanker song
#3 bloggs killed google
#4 arsse plane
#5 pictures of sarah champion

That's all.

Are you dead yet?

A reminder to my dogged if dimwitted readership that I'm off on my travels to Yerp today, and hence will not be bothered about writing anything here if there's any way I can avoid it. So talk amongst yourselves, and if you are good, then maybe I'll see you in June.

Oh, and re: previous post, see also Gmailswap.com. About 5 pico seconds ahead of the meme there, I was.

I have no friends and neither does anyone I know

I was idly browsing eBay to see what the going rate is for a Gmail account. Turns out people are selling their invitations their for $10 to $40 a pop. Not a bad idea: you are part of the Internet mafia, with more free email accounts than you could possibly need, and the arrogant hipsters of Google Inc. aren't giving out their email accounts to just anyone, so you cash in, and start selling of those Gmail invitations that are flooding into your inbox. Neat, eh?

But in the course of this, I found an even more pathetic set of auctions: people selling invitations to Orkut. Yes, that's right folks: you can buy someone's fake, internet only friendship for the cut down price of a dollar-fifty. Doesn't that give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside, that the internet can bring people together, and connect them up in this way?

War stories

Speaking about the Daily Mirror fake photos scandal, army officials quoted in the guardian as saying:

"Brig Sheldon said "people's lives have been placed in jeopardy by what has proved to be nonsense".

Colonel David Black, a former commanding officer of the regiment, said: "It is time that the ego of one editor is measured against the life of a soldier. It is up to the readership, the board of directors and the shareholders to put pressure on to get an apology."

Um... hasn't anyone noticed that these photos were faked by people, presumably members of this regiment? Shouldn't they take some of the responsibility?

Interlude: this website is very confusing. There's a big billboard advertising it on my way to work. This is far too subtle for most people. It's right next to the billboard with my favourite advert: "Comfort Suites only $59 / night. 10% off with this ad". I'll try to take a picture some time.

Heard a US chappy on the radio this week talking about the trouble in Iraq. He said that the problems were being caused by "a disenfranchised minority".

Um, in case you haven't noticed, they don't seem to be having any elections in Iraq at the moment. So, technically, the entire country is disenfranchised...

Perhaps they should just have taken a leaf out of Las Vegas's book:
"What happens in Abu Ghraib, stays in Abu Ghraib"...

Why I hate bloggers

Bloggers are very arrogant, self-centered people who refuse to abide by social conventions. For example -- have you ever noticed how they always insist on top-posting?

Ich Bin, Du Bist

Walked past a magazine store, and was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a magazine cover emblazoned with a picture of the Hilton sisters and a rather stark message: "Die Hiltons"! (attempt to paste image here, although it will probably break in time:



Of course, it was a German magazine, but it still gave pause for thought.

My Bios won't flash

After a fairly frustrating time, I'm giving up with trying to reflash the bios on my mod chip, and think of some new way to get streaming media onto my TV. This is quite annoying, technology failing to live up to its potential even after being hit with a hammer (repeatedly).

So to distract myself from the shortcomings of electronics, I spent the weekend in the catskills with mysterious other. The Catskills are great, because if you repeat it over and over you find that you are saying "Kills Cats". There weren't actually any cats up there, though. Perhaps they had all been killed. Maybe Quentin Tarantarantarantarntino should have sponsored them to change their name to the Billskills for his new flim.

The main reason I'm posting, apart from to remind myself that I'm not dead, is to comment on the changes here at blogspot/blogger. Lots of people who use this website to write blogs have posted about these changes, which essentially mean that exactly the same empty content that they had before will look slightly different. One of the big changes is to automatically integrate a comments option on posts. Of course, I will not be enabling this. There is already a perfectly good comments mechanism for this non-blog: if you have some comment on any posting, then write it out on a post it note, and stick it to your monitor just below the relevant section. If you are sufficiently arrogant that you think the whole world needs to hear what you have to say about something I have written involving a bad pun and irritation about automatically flushing toilets, then invite them round to your house, and show them the posting with the comment post-it note underneath. If you think I must also witness your flailing, then you may peel off the post-it note and send it to me in an envelope. I will then look at this, laugh at your stupid waste of time, then crush the thing in my hand whilst grinning maniacly (to grin maniacly: eg, to assume the facial arrangement of Tony Blair, MP, PM, bah). What could be simpler?

That which does not kill you can still hurt

I've always been annoyed with the phrase "that which does not kill us makes us stronger" or similar. That simply isn't true. For example, consider being punched repeatedly in the face. This normally does not kill you, but does leave you in a considerably weakened state. I suppose that this is meant to refer to things like catching measles where, if you don't die from the measles, then after you recover then you are immune to catching measles again and hence are in some sense stronger. But this doesn't seem like a general principle, but rather a particular situation. And there aren't all that many situations like that.

One case where this might apply has occurred to me recently. I cycle to work along a fairly busy road, on which there has been ongoing building work for ages now. The road used to be quite pleasant to cycle along, because although it was quite busy, it had wide shoulders, so I could cycle along in these and let the traffic whizz past me in the main lanes. But recently, they have narrowed the road to do something strange to it, leaving room for only two lanes of traffic, with no shoulders. The first day after this happened, I was cycling along to one side of the road as usual, when an enormous lorry came thundering past with a few inches to spare, causing me to wobble, and almost come off the road into the adjacent hillside. After recovering my poise, I shook my fist at the departing truck [Ed: actually, he stuck his finger up and shouted that the driver enjoyed sex without a partner].

So, since then I have been adopting a more aggressive mode of travel: instead of cycling along the side of the road, giving the impression that it is possible to pass me, I cycle along in the middle of the lane as if to say "Don't fuck with me". Then, if some idiot does try to overtake, I do at least have a larger safety margin. But still, when you are chugging along at 10mph, and there's an enormous truck breathing down on you, it's certainly an incentive to pick up the speed and get along to the section of road where it widens again and the hulk can safely pass. Hence, I've been really exercising myself along these parts (about a mile or so). The upshot being, that if I don't end up being mangled to death under an eighteen-wheeler, then I will end up being stronger. But only in this case, and not in all other situations.

Hanging on the telephone...

This morning I have been enlivening my life by sticking around in telephone hell. Three simple tasks, all frustrated to greater or lesser extent by incompetency, bureaucracy, stupid rules, laziness, and automatic telephone systems.

1. Pay off old bill. Found out by inspection of a credit report that I had some outstanding charge from a gas company that my housemates had neglected to pay off while they were still living there (I moved out early). Resign self to paying the trifling amount. Attempt to pay off this amount. Get the phone call run around: call one number, get redirected to another number. Call them. They don't have the account any more, it was taken back. And so on. I want to give these people money. Is it really so hard for them to accept it? Still haven't managed to pay it off yet.

2. Get what I paid for. In March: order some computer gubbins. Package arrives, containing wrong (and cheaper) gubbins. After several weeks, finally get an RMA number and return the item. Now, call company repeatedly to try to get acknowledgement that they have some intention of sending the correct item. Get to sit through two minutes of recorded announcements and menus before being dropped into voicemail. Repeatedly. Yawn.

3. Try to get a driving licence. People repeatedly express amazement that I can live in New Jersey and don't drive. It turns out that it is bureaucratically impossible for me to get a licence here. In order to get a licence, I need to get a permit from the DMV. Of course, I'm not allowed to go to the local service center, because I am an alien, and therefore dangerous. So I call up to see if anyone in DMV central knows what I have to do (of course, the charming website has no information about any of this, but experience of friends tells me that I can't trust their lies). It turns out that you can't get a new licence if you have less than 1 year remaining on your visa. And, my visa is issued 1 year at a time. So in fact, it is not possible for me to break through this bureaucracy and get a permit, and hence not possible for me to drive in New Jersey, until I get a new visa with more than one year on it. Roll on the H1-B, I say.