Physics of pain
2 weeks from Friday and then total freedom for 2 months! Plans include a trip to the land of tulips and clogs, although not for a tulip/clog appreciation field study, let me tell you.

I might also find myself on an Alp somewhere, a plank of wood/composite anchored to my feet, speeding towards an impact with an immovable object (a ski-instructor called Jürgen, for example) at a force of µmg (sin A) Newtons, where µ is friction, or lack thereof; A is the angle of incline of said Alp, m = my mass (minus blood shed en route) and g = 9.81ms^-2. Hey, Applied Maths might have been the "seventh subject" of my Leaving Cert, but I remembered some stuff, dammit! Now, knowing the coefficient of restitution of my jawbone is required to calculate how far I will fly when Jürgen takes a swing at me because he was chatting up two blondes when yours truly ploughed into him. This in turn will give my take-off velocity u and angle B, which, in conjunction with A above, will allow us to work out exactly where I will land/where the rescue team can pick me up: - u (sin B) t - ½g (sin A) t², you know? I need to go lie down now.

Mummy, what does "kernel panic" mean?
Finally brought my new baby back into the shop to get that missing 64MB of RAM dealt with. Laptop was still in standby mode so I nearly had a heart-attack when this jolly fellow in a big red lab-coat flipped it upside-down and started screwing the access panel off. He ignored my plainitive squeaks of protest naturally and handed it back to me all of 30 seconds later. Probably could have done it myself; I felt like one of those people who bring their computer, monitor, mouse and printer all back to the shop because they got an error message saying the modem wasn't connected properly... Unfortunate upshot of this noticeable increase in speed (Windows reboots faster than ever before) is that Linux isn't so happy. Ah, sod it; I wanted Debian anyway :-)

Also got the most bog-standard bag possible for the princely sum of IRP 32. It carries the laptop, cordless mouse + receiver and power adaptor + cables...just; if I try cram a PC card in there it's gonna explode. Probably, like.

Been busy. Site has a few new little tweaks. I've been devouring books since Christmas: Andy McNab, Remote Control; Flann O'Brien, The Best Of Myles and The Dalkey Archive; Bill Bryson, Made in America and Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep. And I still have L.A. Confidential and some other one whose name I've forgotten to go through - great stuff. And I've installed Mandrake 7.2 on the Omnibook and I'm starting to r00l a little more at UT and I won the legendary Scruffy's pub quiz last Thursday and got plastered on the subsequent whiskey...

And you expect me to sit down and do a blog entry daily as well? Gtf!

Links: Limmy.com, TER's take on Castaway, "Hentai" Helena Kim.

This article on Slashdot about a new informant system in North Carolina schools, designed to weed out "dangerous" kids, led me in turn to this story. That's it - I'm never going to the US...

\´\´3 0\´\´n j00

("we own you", for the perplexed).

And those are only media companies! Can you name all of Mitsubishi's products, for example? (btw, take a look at the source code of the Mitsubishi page, right down at the bottom - Hi Mum!)

Update: answer to Mitsubishi question and an apparently rather famous article about the Zaibatsu, or Japanese super-corporations. This is good shit, people! Read!

Once I sorted out some teeny-tiny security problems, such as having a version of this, LeSinge.org was finally deemed worthy enough of hosting, meaning no more http://csd.dot-ie.com/~dave/lesinge...unless you want to, like...

Message from jas@matrix on ttyq8 at 16:56 ...
          +------------------------------------------------------+
          |where in this new page to you acknowledge my brillance|
          +------------------------------------------------------+
EOF

Hi Mum!

There is a direct correlation between the lack of posts and my having UT to play.

Managed to read Enigma by Robert Harris in one go last night, from 12-6am. It's a good yarn, better written if maybe quite as much fun as Cryptonomicon, another Enigma/Cryptography/Bletchley Park saga by Neal Stephenson.

I also have some mystifying bruises on my legs after the weekend. Just thought I'd mention that too.

Met this guy at a party on Saturday. Apparently .de domains are quite easy/cheap to get...alas, mine's taken.

I wonder why my laptop only has 64MB of RAM rather than the advertised 128MB? Can't believe I have to bring the fucker back to the shop tomorrow and give more abuse. You could argue that the comp was running satisfactorily fast with its 64MB, and I never would have noticed had I not gone snooping around the System Monitor and subsequently HP's own diagnostic program - but that's not the point!. I may not need it now but in a year's time when I want to run Photoshop 7 (or just X-Windows!) I'm going to suffer then.

Besides, I paid for 128MB so all that's moot. Thought I'd rant regardless.

Oh, and Cliph moved and I may soon be getting that long lusted-after DNS hosting. And the laptop problem will be sorted eventually so I'm basically happy in cyberspace. Just don't ask me about college.

I'm sitting on one of these. Bouncing, too. They're right: it is therapeutic!

*boingaboingaboingaboingaboinga*

Well, I got it. It's heavy and lacks a network card or any decent software whatsoever, but it's MINE! *hug*

It has a cool little set of buttons on the forward edge which allows you to play CDs even when the rest of the machine is on standby so, yeah, it's an oversized discman too. Unreal Tournament runs like a dream; I've already got that familiar neck cramp from sitting in the same frozen position (w/ sniper rifle - *TAK*) for too long.

Jim doesn't know it yet but he's going to be sending me all manner of software/utils/games, 'cos I've got 9ish gigs to fill and I can't play UT all day...or can I?

How was your weekend? Mine was a non-stop rollercoaster of alcohol, new friends and old enemies (not mine, thankfully). I learned (and then forgot) how to say cheers in Kazakhstani and Croatian on respective nights. Then, last night I watched one person (who really should have known better) get very drunk and start antagonising one of the most hypersensitive people on the planet, and then a third person almost losing the rag trying to stop the first two from fighting...god forgive her but she's a very determined little girl... Meanwhile the rest of the table had to just sit back and enjoy the show.
You Know Who You Are, and I bet you all had worse hangovers than I did, ha!

And in other news:
http://www.google.com/search?q=grarg
Funny the way an old nick hangs around long after you've ditched it. I even went and put a giant link back to this page on grarg.freeshell.org. style="font-size:100px" - aaarrr.

It's amazing how many people go and do all out essays when they post blogs. Who do they think is reading this shit? Who do I think is reading this shit? Absolutely nobody. Hits may or may not improve if/when Mr. Dalton finds time to stick lesinge.org into that little httpd_conf file deep in the bowels of this server. Until then, it's a bit of a 4-person audience....hi Andrea, Tanja, Aidan, Cliph...*sigh*

Hmm. Fixed that table width problem.
And yes, it was that simple..
...although not before; cluttered code is bad
Short post
Long bar ----------------------------------->
Well 'ard
Bed now

*gurgle*...so shiiineeyyy...gaze ye mortals upon yon .pdf file and tremble ye in ph33r...

Thu 11 12:07AM [lesinge] =>> mv index.php3 elsewhere.php3
Thu 11 12:07AM [lesinge] =>> mv blog.php3 index.php3
Thu 11 12:08AM [lesinge] =>> chmod o+r *

There: that's my front page problem solved!

It's a bit annoying that I always have to write a minimum amount in these entries, or else the little nested table in which each entry sits won't fill out to the right and everything ends up looking arseways...which is an accurate description of how this page generally looks in IE. Is Netscape whore mise und stolz darauf. All IE-only people can go here. Pssst! Mike! NS 4.5 looks at your page and laughs! Laughs, I say!

My pal Jim is getting a Powerbook. Tax free. While not an Apple fan in any strong sense, I do realise that a 500MHz G3 would pound a 700MHz PIII into the ground. But that's offset by the weight, the shite battery life and the general lack of easily available (read: bootleggable) software. This will be the source of friendly debates for many months to come, involving some or all of these words. Yes, Dave, linking to your own pages is sad.

TMB has got herself into some real hot water this time. Very frightening article, all the same...

...what happens when the overly sensitive turn their attention to the Web? Will the Web become as diluted as our local dailies? At least broadcast and print journalists have the benefit of company lawyers and funding to provide a defense. What of the lone online writer, who has to bear the brunt of the frivolous lawsuit?

Blast and buggery! I've been looking around at some other blogs in the last couple of days, mainly the ones linked from one tomcosgrave.com, and I come across Kitsch Bitch. Nice page; click the "about" link and notice her use and, in particular, spelling of the term "verbal diahorrea" (sic). Oh, the shame...what must you have thought of me?

Sic(k) isn't the word. So now I have to change this page's title. To verbal diahorrea (sic). Obviously.

Ordered Omnibook. Yay! Tomorrow we go looking for a mouse and The Matrix on DVD and all will be complete. Then I install UT and bye-bye college. Sing Hallelujah, brothers!

Holy shit. If you have Netscape and IE on your comp, fire up whichever of them isn't on, and then go to http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/, the World Wide Web Consortium's offical page on all things style-related. Note the differences? If even the W3C are allowing effectively different pages for different browsers, what hope have the rest of us?

IE 5.5 PC: red box on left
IE 5.0 Mac: red box hovers (rather groovily) on right
NS 6.0 PC: red box on right, obscuring text
NS 4.5 Mac: no red box at all!

Looks like we're back to the old //--> hide from old browsers days...

Message from cliph@csd.dot-ie.com on ttyp5 at 00:41 ...
                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                              
                              " helena links us! "
                              " helena links us! "
                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EOF

Remember that Dell (see link below)? Well suck on this. And they have a shop just down the road from me! Tomorrow I hope to walk in there and come back out clutching (for the benefit of those who didn't hit the link) a HP Omnibook: PIII 700MHz, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD, 14.1" screen...and an 8x DVD-ROM drive...for barely over IRP 2000. Oh yea, my pretties. Network cards can be bought later, Windows in English can be re-installed when I go home and I can put up with the keyboard, dammit! I just wanna watch The Matrix!

And that wan helena off netsoc linked here too. So I may as well return the compliment. /me waves. Honestly, the things I do for a better PageRank...

Drinking, sleeping, socialising, shopping and generally experiencing real life has led me to neglect my poor weblog. I think it's significant that the last one I posted was on my first day back in Ireland, and that this will be my last before Germany. I fly out from Dublin at 7am tomorrow. Good news is that I may finally be getting that laptop, the conclusion of a mission begun over 2 years ago and interrupted by failure of a year and a summer spent in Tesco's. So we're happy-ish.

Ok, so I'm homesick! I wanna stay here! *whiiine* - the Dell'll keep me warm though :-)

Auf Wiederbloggen