Today's brainy quote!!!

The objective of a salesperson is not to make sales, but to make customers. [?!?!?!? I thought it was a bit of both!!!!]

The web's not safe anymore- in 16-bit!!!!!!

Ah, I remember the old days!!!!!!!! When you could only get 8 colours on a compute!!!!!! And they were mostly shades between red and muddy brown!!!!!!!!! And not so long ago, you have 16 bit computes with around 16 colours out of a choice of 512!!!!!

Yes, but those days are gone, aren't they, I hear you sob!!!!!!!!!! Well, not necessarily!!!!! You can return to the old days of limited pallettes by making your the colours in your website "websafe" in 16 bit "hi-colour" mode!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep, Webmonkey, one of the few remaining relics left from the long dead Hotwired, have done a little investigation into the old traditional "web safe" color palette which was used on web browsers in the old 256-colour VGA days, and whether it worked any more or not!!!!!!

What they found was that in 16-bit "hi-colour" mode, only 22 of the original 216 websafe colors were actually websafe, and most of those colours are shade of green!!!!!!!!! So if you use this palette, not only will be websafe- it'll be reallly enviromentally friendly as well!!!!!!!!

This CD goes with a bang- literally!!!! (Almost!!!!!)

U-no, when I was studying the gentle art of computer science at Uni (back when Unis were unis, and not former High Street toilets with the word "uni" stuck on them!!!!!) Oops, there I go being my wacky off-the-wall self again!!!!!!!

Ahem, anyway- what we used to do at Uni was change the Mac system, so that it played funny samples when you did things!!!!! For example, set the keylcick to emit a gunshot FX, then an explosion for the Return key!!!!!! In fact, some of the more enterprising peeps (ie me!!!!!!) recorded our own samples!!!! When people did something wrong on my special system, they would hear an angry person saying: "You complete and utter dolt!!!!!!!!!!!!"!!!!!!!!!

How much easier our job would have been if this CD was around!!!! From those delightful chaps at Rhino, who have brightened many a day with their re-release of the entire Monkees back catalogue, have come up with another winner!!!!!!! "Crash! Bang! Boom! The Best of WB Sound FX"!!!!!!! Now your loony system can have Looney Toons sound FX!!!!!!!!!

Second Summer of Love- 12 years late!!!!!

Those lucky colonials!!!!!! Why, only 12 years after us "limeys" jumped about in fields to "acid house" and wore garish baggy clothing, prompting some people to call it a "Second Summer of Love", folks in the US are jumping about in fields to "acid house" and wearing garish baggy clothing, prompting some people to call it a "Second Summer of Love"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And just like in 1988 in the UK, there's tons of "drugs menace" type stories in the mainstream media!!!!!!!!

I hate to think what happens when Big Beat hits the US in 2011!!!!!!!!! They'll have to bring Fatboy Slim over in a zimmer-frame by then!!!!!!!!!!!

Answers on a postcard, please- marked "Cosplay"!!!!!!!

What on earth is Cosplay?!?!?!?!?!?! I just saw this word the other day, and found loads of websites connected with it, and I still don't know what it is!!!!!!!!!

Apparently it has something to do with Anime and wearing costumes wot are based on Anime characters, and the people involved go to sci-fi stylee conventions a lot, but that's about as far as I can comprehend of it, because no-where in their websites does anyone actually explain wot Cosplay actually is!!!!!!! Even tho there's tons of websites devoted to this enigmatic cause!!!!!!

There's even CG Cosplay, which given my current lack of knowledge on the subject makes about as much sense as "CG Ballroom Dancing"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tom's Browned off about Weblish!!! (Doh!!!!!!)

You might have noticed that certain dead-tree-media (!!!!) folks have noticed that tha megamighty NetWeb Inpho-way hi-pipe has had an effect on language!!!!! Well, that realisation has finally hit Scotland's favourite grumpy slaphead, Tom Brown- columnist for the increasingly desperate Scottish tabloid the Daily Record!!!!!

Presumably since the paper's moved into that swish new building on Anderston Quay, apparently Mr Brown's been getting into the pleasures of email!!! In his column today, he notes how "rude" it is, because it doesn't start with "Dear sir..." or end with "yours sincerely"!!!! He's also noticed that some people abbreviate words!!!! Apparently "lol" means "Laugh Out Loud"!!!!! Well I never!!!! He also threatens to answer any nasty emails sent to him with the reply: "B*****s 2 U!" (Well, that's what it says here!!!!!!!)

You might notice that there's no weblink to the online webby version of his column- well, look we tried, but the Record's website is even more useless than the actual "newspaper"!!!!! We went along to Tom Brown's column (Ooh-errrr!!!!!!!!) which is helpfully titled "Untitled Document", and it's basically full of weeks old stuff!!!!!!!! In fact, it's dates from the time when his former editor wanted to give the give the government a good kicking!!!!! So you get an amusing rant where he claims to be an "old Labour supporter"!!!!! (Funny, I see no mention of when he was editor of the Scottish Daily Express, back when they still supported the Conservative party!!!!!!!)

Even more amusingly, he writes later: "Why hasn't there been a national outcry about the price of petrol?"!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Higgs- junk food for atoms!??!?!

How often have you passed McDonalds or Burger King and thought "I wonder if there's an equivalent of these fast food retailers for atomic particles?!?!?!??!"!!??!?!?!

Well, maybe not!!!!! But only because it wouldn't be called "McDonalds" or "Burger King", it would be called "Higgs"!!!!!!!!!

U C, (!!!!) it's this special type of "quark" thingy called a "boson"!!!! This particular type is called a "Higgs" boson, named after some dude called Higgs, presumably!!!!!!!!!

What is does, according to scientest bods, is that there's squillions of them all about, too small to be seen, and they cause "drag" on the bigger atommic particles, which shows up as "mass"!!!! In other words, they slow down atomic matter, and make them put on weight, just like your average junk-food "boutique"!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, that's the theory anyway!!!!! And some scientest think they might have found actual evidence of it's existance!!!! Apparently it's a bit "plump" itself- according to a scientest in this webby page: "We all hope that what we are seeing is the Higgs on the horizon"!!!!!!!!!!! Now that's what I call "big-boned"!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today's cheesy bon mot!!!

An opportunist hears opportunity at the door before it knocks.

Bust the joint- with a joint!!!!!!!!

What with militant protests happening every place (Even in our own little ol' island!!!) the average protester is going to have to be a bit smarter to stand out!!!!!

So expect more stunts like this one!!!!! A load of people called The Australian Cannabis Law Reform Movement, who are in favour of the law being a bit easier on "special" cigarettes, are intending to disrupt a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, Australia- by battering down the door with a battering ram shaped like a big "Camberwell Carrot"!!!!!!!!!!! A spokesman says: "The Drug War is the pointy end of globalisation"!!!!!!!!!!!

If you find this easy to use- you're a woman!!!!!!!

U-no... (!!!!) After using loads of operating systems, (Coming to the conclusion that Windows is without doubt the biggest load of crap ever assembled in one place!!!!!) I've been surf-trolling tha megamighty W3 for loadsa infs about WIMPs, by which of course I mean the GUI, not the idiots from Big Brother!!!!!!!!!!!

One interesting thingy I found was this "essay" called The Ideology of Ease by the wonderfully named Bradley Dilger!!!!!!!!!! It starts off by noting the probs various computer students had FTPing and copying files to a floppy!!!!!! They're computer students forr flips sake, they should be learning these things!!!!!!!!!!! It's like trying to learn to drive without knowing what that big circular thing is on the dashboard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other funny thing is the surprising assertion that the concept of ease of use is wimmen's stuff!!!!

"Women are expected to identify with ease; men are expected either not to need it or to use it in passing on their way to superior ability. I believe ease is closely connected to the identification of masculinity with mastery and power."

I'll certainly remember that one next time I find I've spontaneously re-assigned my gender as a direct result of interaction with a graphical user interface!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spamming- in C!!!!!

Have you ever completed a fabby new program in VIC Basic, and thought: "Hmmm!!! Maybe I should spam it to squillions of newsgroups!!!!!!!!!" Well, maybe not- but you might if it was someone else's!!!!!

Take this example... In amongst all those "Live Amsterdam Rumpy-Pumpy!!!!" type bollox spam was spread a C program!!!!!!

So what would possess someone to spam a C prog?!?!?!?! Well, take a closer look- it's our old friend, DeCSS, the DVD decrypter that the movie industry are not too hot on!!!!!!!

Of course, this could start a trend!!!!! Loads of people could release C program listings for one's compute, just like the old BBC Basic listings in BBC Micro User!!!!!! In fact, some spammer could be really nasty, label their C prog "DeCSS", someone downloads it and runs it, and it says on the screen: "Now we've caught your attention, why not point your browser to Live Amsterdam Rumpy-Pumpy at http://www.liveamsterdamrumpypumpy.com/"!!!!!!!!!

Big Brother is really really boring!!!!!!!!

Is it me, or is that Big Brother show on tha tellybox really really really boring?!??!?!?!??!!?!! I've only watched that episode where Nick gets turfed out, and even that was incredibly boring!!!!!! "Nasty Nick"!?!?!? More like "Not-very-interesting Nick"!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And he was the least uninteresting of the folk!!!!! Even worse was that Tom dude, who speaks very slowly!!!! And that Nicola woman who thinks shes really "extrovert" and an "individual", when in fact she comes across as someone who is about as subversive as a wacky "yoof" TV presenter!!!!!!!!! And people are apparently "addicted" to this tosh, because well, they're on TV, and therefore must be inherently more "interesting"!!!!!!!!!!!!

And guess wot!!!! It's even worse in the US, where in their versh of the show, at least the contestants have got enough backbone to start getting cheesed off with the producers trying to prod them to do silly "tasks" like fashion shows and "songs", and are threatening to stage a walkout!!!!!!!!!!!

They're not the only ones!!!!!! There are a couple of anti-BB sites on tha W3!!!!!!

Taking "body modification" to tha max!!!!!!!!

Yep, you've probably been seeing this one coming after we were talking about nanotechnology and "internal" ID chips last week!!!!!! So here it is!!!!!!

Move over, humans!!!!!!! Looks like the next hype is going to be "transhumans" and "posthumans"!!!!!!! The two terms of course referring to what humans will presumably be called in the post info-hiway-pipe nanobot revolution!!!! Apparently, "some signs of transhumanity include bodily augmentation with implants, androgyny, asexual reproduction, and distributed identity", which sounds a bit like those peeps in that Gap advert if you ask me!!!!!!!!!!

Ah!!!! This is just like the old days of the web, when people were going on about the internet turning the world into a global village where everyone just happened to act like burnt-out Californian hippies!!!!!! Talking of which, doesn't it all read a bit much like that dude Terence McKenna that those folks from The Shamen were hanging out with?!?!?!

Wot, do you mean: "Who TF is TK?!?!?!?"!!!!!!! Actually, he's been going around for some time... And if you thought that all those end-of-world people would be a bit quieter after the New Years celebrations passed off without the apocalypse spoiling things, you'd be wrong!!!!!!! Check this one out!!!!!!!

Apparently the pace at which life changes is accellerating so much that there it'll come to a "singularity" (as early as 2012!), where everything changes all the time in a really "psychedelic" fashion!!!!!!! You'll probably find yourself becoming "transhuman" or "posthuman" over a single lunchtime!!!!!! And if you don't watch out, and your brain will go foom!!!!!!

Answer!?!?!? Take lots of psychedelic drugs, apparently!!!!!!! And this interview with McKenna gives you some helpful hints on the "organic" variety, which you can get next time you're on a trip (!!!!!!) down to your local Amazonian Rain Forest!!!!!!

Needless to say, the Transhuman folks are a more "respectable" bunch, and don't spend loads of time talking about the effects of various "special" fungi!!!!!!!!!

Nanobots- the Next Generation!!!!

Never mind big rings, wot about small bots?!?!?!?! By which I of course mean Nanobots!!!!!!!

You might remember that tortuous nanobots storyline in Red Dwarf VII!!!! Well, this lot of nanobots scientests know absolutely nothing about it- but they are big fans of Star Trek!!!!!! "I was a dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie" says one!!!!! So that's all right then!!!!! They're also into "2001: A Space Oddessy", even tho it's obviously out of date!!!!!!

Rather annoyingly, the article in question is on this single page "edition" of something called Edge, but no direct link to the article in question!!!!!!! Just search for the text "Beyond 2001: HAL's Legacy for the Enterprise Generation".

Today's (slightly topical) quote!!!

If you're not mature enough to accept criticism, you're too immature for praise.

A dark age- literally!!!

You might heard of this "dark age" lark, which happened way back in the olden days when the Roman Empire went kaput!!!!!!!! But it might have been literally dark!!!!!! Or at least a little dimmer.

Some scientest dude has found evidence that the beginning of the Dark Ages coincided with an apparent meteorite strike somewhere on the planet, which might have messed up the climate a tad!!!!

And he found all this by looking at some tree rings!!! I hope he kept a "log" of the results!!!!!!!! (Doh!!!!!!!!!!)

Young Whippersnappers- you're rubbish!!!!!!!!

At least, you are according to this vaguely amusing article in today's Glasgow Herald. Apparently the "wee weans" are too well behaved or something!!!!!!!

Frankly, my daughter's pals let the side down. They were a disgrace to their generation. They were so damned polite and pleasant and well-behaved. None of them fell over. They didn't shout and swear. Nothing was smashed. Not one fight broke out. They didn't get elephant's trunk. No-one disgraced themselves. In fact, they were perfect company.

And that's why they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Whatever happened to the outrageous behaviour of youth? How are old geezers like us supposed to enjoy a party if we don't have their laddish antics to complain about? Don't they realise that they're depriving us oldies of the pleasure of being able to say things like: "For God's sake, turn that bloody music down. You can't hear yourself speak in here!" Or: "Put that funny cigarette out, my lad, and put it out now!" Or even: "That's it, I'm calling the police!"

It even rains in Gleneagles!!!!

How about this for a useful picture of the scenic countryside surrounding the famous Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland, taken courtesy of a webcam!!!! Great view, huh!!!!!!!

It's a Bad Word- Literally!!!!!!!!!

Looks like someone has overconfigured their MS Word toolbar!!!!!!!!!!

Today's (vaguely appropriate) cheesy quote!!!

Public opinion is private gossip which has reached epidemic proportions.