As per the previous item: this headline can’t be coincidence. The IWK’s new boss was fired for lying on his resume. And his name is mr. Schmidt. Yes, really, but where’s the coincidence you wonder?
Last night, I bought the movie (rather DVD) ‘About Schmidt’.
Via Marshall Brain, there’s proof of the Afterlife! (link to mr. Brain’s)
“Schwartz and his staff would then compare the readings. They were astonished to find that in most cases, the mediums would bring through the same people and the same messages, with an 80-90 percent accuracy rate.”
Marshall Brain has some interesting questions regarding the research, or study into mediums. I’d like to add that the mentioned ’80-90 percent accuracy’ equals the estimated amount of accuracy of horoscopes. With the help of mediums and horoscopes, I’ll be winner of the Grand Slam Atlantic Lottery Jackpot next week. I only need to buy a ticket.
One of the more exciting things I’ve learned as a programmer is being able to grasp CVS as a tool to maintain projects. Sure, CVS has its disadvantages: it’s clunky, it can be insecure. It can be ununderstandable particularly when you have to start merging code. But there goes nothing above having an overview what has actually changed over time. And at the press of a ‘button’ (that is when using a ‘CVS GUI’) you can revert changes or even work on multiple versions of your program side by side.
(And with a web interface, it’s actually cool to see how a program has changed or ‘evolved’ over time).
Just last night
I (casually) predicted to my wife that the Tim Hortons’ ‘Roll Up the Rim’ contest was about to start. Today it actually started, as one can tell from the Horton site.
Long time readers will also remember earlier entries on this contest: the 2003 entry is here. The 2002 entry has been imported at this location. And yes, dear, we can compare the numbers once again to find out that the biggest losers in Canada are (and this won’t surprise anyone)… the poor citizens from Nova Scotia and Manitoba! Stats freaks: get out the calculators and count all the chances you may have to win that GMC truck. Or Plasma TV. Or whatever.
As for Hortons: This year, Nescafe instant coffee will do. If you win a truck, let me know.
Browsing through the movie trailers at Apple, I noticed the ones for ‘Alien vs. Predator’. There’s this one (the trailer) and that one (featurette) and both made me laugh out loudly. I wonder why people would be interested to see two ‘outer-space’ things duke it on earth. And the storyline (as featured on the ‘featurette’ above), it is so obnoxious that it hurts. But then there were also people who watched the ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ movie.
Since Tim Bray 
did it too, on the right a screenshot of Unreal Tournament 2004.
I’m running it in 640x480resolution:32 bit colours, but I assume I can set the resolution much higher since the game is still running fluidly. Last night I played a couple of rounds with the brother, who happens to be a pretty tough competitor.
Picked up an S-Video and an audio cable at RadioShack’s and afterwards bought a couple of DVDs at the cheapie-aisle at BlockBusters (‘2nd DVD half the price’): ‘Solaris’ and ‘Dream Catcher’.
I noticed that having both the LCD and TV on caused some distortion (‘frame skipping’) when playing Solaris, so turned the LCD off and all was well after. Also, reminder to self: although the video played perfectly, think of not-buying ‘Wide Screen’ DVDs next time.
Alfons has a picture of ‘De Brink’ covered in, oh, 5 centimeters of snow. Not that it’s really a weird or unique happening. It just looks like it hasn’t been snowing like that for years. I mean, as a young kid I remember having plenty of snow over there. Not as much as I have seen recently, but enought to go out with the whole class (nee: school) and have a snowball fight instead of regular physical education.
Imagine a teacher doing that nowadays without being sued. Life was so simple then.
It worked!
For the ones not to eager to view other’s PCs, the link above just shows that my new computer didn’t fail the Knoppix test. Neat.
Earlier this day, on the hunt for extensive power eating utensils to blow up my brand new computer, I decided to watch the Sylvia Millecam (picture) documentary over at the Dutch public broadcasting website. Actually, I wasn’t even aware of the fact she died (In short, she decided to find out alternative healing methods for her breast cancer instead of trusting more successful methods like chemotherapy or radiation. She died last August). It was interesting to hear one of the commentators (actually, one of her friends) say that ‘religion can only gain ground on the wings of fear’. How could such a smart (and funny0 girl fall in the hands of ‘pseudo science’?
Astronomers almost made the call.
On January 13th, some scientists believed that a 30 meter object called 2004 AS1 was going to hit Earth. When a researcher at the JPL said the rock had a chance of 1 out 4 to hit the planet ‘somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere’, officials contemplated to make the call to the President. However:
“They completely misread the situation.There was plenty of time to get other observers on the job”
They did apparently: an amateur astronomer managed to take his telescope to the clouds and take a picture of a blank sky.
It’s done. The MyNote 930, the Pentium II 266 MHz computer that went from one hand to the other has been officially retired. It did everything from 1998 up to 2004: it compiled games, it compiled RB, it compiled the latest applications for work. In those 6 years Proteus hosted Windows, Windows 2000, SuSe and OpenLinux partitions. It served PHP pages, Unreal, Quake and Half-Life servers.
Salut.
Yesterday’s Truro Daily News reported on the VIA train that was forced to stay put at Truro’s marshalling yard during the Blitz. Since VIA rail could be held liable for any wrongdoings, passengers were not allowed to leave the train during the whole ordeal. Yesterday’s reportage had a prominent picture, actually pretty weird and bizarre. It showed a man looking desperately out of the window.
It actually made me think of those major events back in the late Seventies. Or if you’re into Dutch, these pictures are more stirring because I’ve seen them over and over in all the newspapers in those days.
