Francis Crick, one of the "discoverers" of DNA (there's a whole back
story, complete with back stabbing to it if you're interested) has died
at the age of 88. He was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 for
the work by James Watson and himself on the molecular structure of DNA.
For more about Francis Crick, James Watson and the discovery of the
structure of DNA have a look here
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July 2004 Archives
the night buses in Glasgow are always an experience, and generally i'm
drunker than I was tonight when I get them so don't really notice. This
time we had a couple who were traveling, and were making their way back
to their campsite in Steppes. This pair (and it was the guys fault)
started talking to this women who got on (aiming for Cumbernauld) and
getting into the whole past history and stuff like that....Did you know
that there is a sequel to "Catch-22". and that "the book coined the
phrase"? hehehehe, gotta love these sort of people, they should be
cherished. That and the impromptu (and only slightly inaccurate)
literature lesson.
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just reading the results of the UK Big Brother awards (and not its not
the stupid reality tv programme that everyone hates but Big Brother in
a 1984 sense), and as interested to see that the US-VISIT programwon
the "David Blunket Lifetime Menace Award", which as you can see is a US
program (?pogrom?). If you didn't know US-VISIT the basis that I refuse
to goto the States at the moment, as it requires you to a) apply for a
visa b) have your finger prints taken, and c) be photographed all
before you even leave your own country, and then get finger prints
checked and photographed and log, on entering and leaving the country.
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I'm proud to relate that EFF is representing Jib Jab, the creators of the wonderful "This Land is Your Land" Flash parody that aroused the ire of the holder of Woody Guthrie's copyrights and resulted in a threatened lawuit. Here's a little bit of my cow-orker Fred von Lohmann's letter to the copyright-holder's lawyers.I've been following this story for a while now, and whilst I've not actually seen the video, the outcry (from the Copyright holder) has been quite vocal, and IMHO totally without merit, so its nice to see that EFF has stepped up to this plate, and is once again fighting for "Fair Use". --------
i could not resist putting this one up...i'msooooodead!
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and they say that third time pays for all!
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yes and more!
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Finally dug up those photos!
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Just Read and hope for the best outcome.
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If anyone has ever read the Neal Stephenson book "Snow Crash"
you should recall the reputation for the Neuro Surgeons of Chiba, who
could just about reconstruct anything that went wrong with you
genetically....well this article on Wired
has an echo of this to it, the establishment of a cutting edge genetic
center in South East Asia. With the Government offering high quality
equipment, no restrictions on research, and most importantly money,
could this be the start of the black surgeries of Chiba?
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The Broadcast flag (if you didn't know) is a plan by the Movie & Tv
industry to hobble all those PVR gadgets that are out there (á la
Tivo). So as a countermeasure EFF (Electronic Freedom Frontier have launched a page that details how to make your own PVR before the broadcast flat tech is implemented.
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ok first up its not "Spider-man3" its an attempt by Spidey fans to make a totally true to the comic version of Spiderman, before Spider-man 3
comes out (which is due to start filming in 2006 for a 2007 release).
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Trawling through somewhere or other (I can't remember the exact web
site)but came across this website, in which someone has put together,
in Lego, a "car" from some of Heinlein's books, "The Gay Deciever". I
have no idea what the back ground is to it, but the model looks cool,
and I'm gonna go dig up some of the books and have a read cos it looks
quite interesting....and they say the 'Net isn't useful for anything.
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PIcked up this link via Corante and then the subsequent C|net.com
article. I agree with what Ernest Miller is saying, P2P networks are
not the problem, they're just a different mechanism for spreading
information, the problem is actual security of the originating computer
systems. I'm starting to resent all those people who say that P2P is
the reason for Piracy/Porn/Rabid Fantasies about chickens or othe such
nonsense. People are responsible. Don't shoot the messenger.
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as i was reading a post on Boing Boing in which Cory Doctorow mentions that one his old classmates (Tim Wu) will be looking after Lawrence Lessig's blog
for the next month or so, whilst he's away. I'd have thought that by
now at least someone from my school would have overachieved and become
at least infamous, if not actually famous. Oh well I guess is just not
my destiny to be connected to rich and powerful people. Of course if
any of my ex-classmates happen to read this and are rich and famous,
and i don't know about it please let me know.
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If anyone is in Glasgow at the start of August, I recommend the
following:
The Blimp, playing 5th August at The Bunker.
Gig's expected to start around 2100.
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in fact sod it, this is the list of web-comics
that I'm working through (and yes they're on the Edge of
Sanity....after all I do have to drive up his bandwidth up too!)
And on a connected note, I went to see Spider-man 2 the other day. Not
bad as comic book adaptations for film go but seemed awfully like a
middle film (see LOTR:The Two Towers). The Spiderman/Peter Parker &
MJ story line got pushed on a good way and in less time that in the
comic books. The most contrived thing (well for me) was the "illness"
he was suffering due to his (effectively) bi-polar personality. I did
like the manifestation of his inner turmoil being demonstrated
physically but some of was just plain bad science. Ok yes I can accept
that his web shooters wouldn't work, on the basis of some form of
voluntary muscle being required and there is a basis of this being
affected by stress/trauma (hmm analogy of impotence springs to
mind...and curiously both are problems with ejecting "white fluid" from
the body...but I'm lowering the tone of this). Could we not have left
it there??? I mean like seriously (sorry forgot the <american>
tags) his eye sight deteriorating and his inability to walk up walls?
Ok the whole leaping about thing I can almost let go on the same
reasoning as his web shooters, but the first film established his wall
crawling abilities as being due to quite a fundamental physical change,
i.e. the millions of little spikes. OK it never explained how it was
that he didn't end up sticking to things inadvertantly, but it does not
appear that a concious effort is required for him to stick to a
wall...he just does when its required...hmm maybe just did talk myself
round that one. But definately the eyesight thing should not have
happened...his eyes just decided to pack it in? erm and then start
working again when he needs them...i'm not convinced.
However despite this complaints (and my trying to spot the mistakes in
the film...and ok yes I did look out for MJ's dress magically changing
form whenever the camera was below her...and the wire reinforced
spiders web...yes and I noticed the guy sitting in the car quite
happily as it collided (or was) with another one) the whole thing was
quite good fun. Not to be taken seriously, but quite good fun. SPOILER
BELOW!
My next question is will Harry forgive and forget that Spiderman caused
the death of his father now that he knows that Peter is Spiderman and
that his Dad was the Green Goblin or will Harry follow in his fathers
footsteps and become the GG? Personally I suspect the former, as I
don't think that they could re-do the first villan...but then again I
could be wrong.
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after years on the "Information Super Highway" i've finally picked up
my first bug on the windshield...I'll upload the photo when I get into
work!
-Update- Well I would have uploaded it at
work...if the Bluetooth dongle would have worked...oh well you'll just
have to take my word for it!
Update 2noticed a certain of irony about the photo, which isn't here, but it was taken with my phonecam, whilst looking at the Sent exhibition web site, which is an exhibition of phonecam images
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I'm laying all of the blame for this on McLaren and his list of web comics...but in the last fortnight I have read (from the beginning) User Friendly and Loserz.
Both of which I heartily recommend to every one.
UF definately resonates more with me, being a professional geek and
all, and Loserz is just cool...although I especially liked the
Adventures of Max & Cecil, two Calvin and Hobbes-esque
characters...which reminds me i also made it through Smart Ass Chronicles which has a very good Calvin & Hobbes reference (and a "We're so gonna get sued for this"!!!)
hmm wonder if there is a Calvin & Hobbes RSS feed anywhere....anyone?
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when did this stuff become so important to people?
its a Pound (£) coin if you can't tell (yes I know its a little blurry
but it was taken with my PHONE!)
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Just been to see Shrek 2 (tried to take a photo of the copyright notice
but kinda screwed it up). Quite good fun, although the set pieces you
could pretty much see a mile away, and my friend lost count of the
number of references to other films and stuff after the first
minute.....I personally liked the Garfield reference ("I hate Mondays")
especially as there had been a trailer for the Garfield film...which
does look quite good fun....
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just reading a Blogger how-to on AudioBlogging and the suggestion was
made to get someone to read BoingBoing
and save it as an audio blog or some format that could be synced to an
IPod or something...This has started my coding fingers twitching...how
about a program that will take a RSS feed pull down each of the
articles or intros (or maybe both depending on settings) and then
synthesise an audio feed which is then saved as MP3.
Hmm coding fingers are really starting to itch...hmm maight end up
coding at home (again....thought I'd broken that habit) since I
shouldn't really be spending any time on personal projects at work
(even if they do end up making it into work related stuff)
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leet! someone else actually reads this blog...its not just me talking
to myself all the time. So hiya Kiri!! Yes the Waxy's tradition is
being kept well alive....well mostly just Mclaren and myself being
drunken bums twice (if not more) a week. And congrats you're the first
person that I've heard from since the end of term.
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Divil has updated his excellent UI controls for .Net. These controls totally blew me away, much more easy to use and way better looking than some commercial controls, and the prices are simply amazing. It's free for non-profit use. The controls include Menu and toolbars which can be docked to any side and have custom renderers, Docking window controls, outlook bar etc. This guy is really a guru of windows forms control development.--------[Sijin Joseph's blog]
well after a break from SWG for about 3 months, i'm back in and
thinking about dropping all of the (hard??) work in getting my Master
Ranger batch to go into the serious mon(k)ey making business of
Medicine. With Doc's charging 10kCredits for a set of buffs it seems
like a little bit of a money spinner, especially given that I'm not
having to start from scratch in terms of already having a healthy
(c.600k) bank account. And that given today my character made in excess
of 10kCr in a couple of hours whilst not even charging for it...not bad
methinks.
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An alternative version of the State of the Onion address that El
Presidento gives.
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Episode 22 Shredders at the ready [The Register]--------
Just had a moment to check out the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon
on Cable, which I've discovered is using the "Red Button" or
Interactive features. All well and good, the last time I looked at any
interactive content it was, to put it bluntly a little poor. This time
the Beeb's got a multi-cort selector with live inserts and
you can switch to each of them as you wish. Very cool, I'll put up a
photo once I hook my phone up for a sync. (really need to get another
bluetooth dongle)
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Episode 21 of the Bastard Operator From Hell is up on The Register
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