get me one of these. now.

if…

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
If life gives you Cornettos, pretend they’re penises and make pornart.

yo! ubuntu!

It’s 1830 here in the UK on April 29th 2010.

Where the fuck is my new operating system?

[10 second-later] Edit: Oh, there it is.

kids your lesson for today starts here:

Remember, children: Never ever get involved with computers.

Don’t talk about how you once saw a computer on the television. Don’t say you saw a computer in a shop. Never admit to hearing about your friend’s dad installing a wireless router. Don’t buy a PC magazine. Don’t have an opinion on a games console. Never visit PC World. Never ask for a laptop, a desktop, a netbook, a mobile phone or an MP3 player. Don’t work out how to make some text go bold in Word. Ignore the internet. Never read up on new gadgets. If you can help it, try not to switch on a television or watch a DVD. Don’t set the clock on the dashboard of a car. Don’t replace the batteries in a remote control. Never get an email address. Avoid wearing black and never eat Mars bars and drink Pepsi. Your hero is not Dennis Nedry.

But even if you remember all of that, you will still be the computer expert in your family and be required to set up the wireless networking for your parents.

chernobyl tours (ice creams extra, da?)

It’s funny what the internet will turf up. A fella called Neil Byrne took a trip to tour Chernobyl, the site of the World’s Worst Nuclear Accident (They’ve Told Us About).

You can see his words and pictures here. It is a fascinating article, and if you are of a certain age and can remember it happening, I dare you not to be moved by it.

Of course, reader, this is boredofjam, and so you’d expect the moving to be juxtaposed with the stupid. So here’s what Google maps will show you if you go to Chernobyl in the Ukraine and do a “Search nearby”.

Perhaps sir would like a tasty biriani to go with his human tragedy?

Edit: Just noticed that the date for the disaster was April 26th, 1986. Twenty four years ago last Monday.

local politics for local people

The Guardian (dear god, them again) have a really good 11 minutes on the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition in Ipswich.

It’s worth a watch, here.

And don’t forget, if you really can’t stand it any more, Vote Badger!

classic wankery

Greetings.

Have this link. It made me chuckle thanks to its expert demonstration of a professional wanker demonstrating classic wankery.

Starting off by comparing some in-ear headphones to floor-standing speakers as a way of justifying this hand moistening, self indulgent pocket shuffling, is pure grade-A wank in a gold bucket.

I have a feeling that Steve Guttenberg, whilst not not-starring in Police Academy films is the sort of fella who will spunk out on $1500 HDMI cables. Literally.

But, whatever floats your boat. Enjoy listening to them badly encoded MP3s, y’all.

why i’ll never make it as a coderer

From the text of .Net Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation:

…For example, if you want to get and change the extension of a file, you can do so with the Path class, as shown in the following code snippet:

// C#
string ourPath = @"c:\boot.ini";
Console.WriteLine(ourPath);
Console.WriteLine("Ext: {0}", Path.GetExtension(ourPath));
Console.WriteLine("Change Path: {0}", Path.ChangeExtension(ourPath, "bak"));

From the test at the end of the chapter:

3. The following code changes the extension of a file. (True or False)

// C#
string ourPath = @"c:\boot.ini";
Path.ChangeExtension(ourPath, "bak");

A. True
B. False

From the answers in the back of the book:

A. Incorrect: The Path class deals only with the string of a path. It makes no changes to the file system.
B. Correct: The Path class deals only with the string of a path. It makes no changes to the file system.

3. Correct Answer: B

Fuck you, .Net. Fuck you.

the wepad

Apart from sounding like something middle-aged ladies have to wear when they want to laugh, cough, sit up, stretch for the last packet of Fybogel Orange on the shelf at Boots, or breathe, the WePad, to capitalise its name nicely, looks to be the choice gadget for the discerning technology user in 2010.

No surprises then, that it looks very much like that other thing which Apple launched recently. You remember, the computer they claimed was “magic”. However the abilities and specs of this machine prove that the iPad is made of big cheesy chunks of Far-East-built fail.

For a start, the WePad is widescreen. This is something that Apple appeared to think wasn’t a useful feature for a machine which was specifically built to help you consume media (read: buy stuff off Apple iVideoShop). For a second, it runs an actual magical hybrid of a Linux and Google’s Android. Or something. I don’t know. Dear god, it’s just a computer. There will be icons and a mouse and a keyboardy thing on the screen that will help you type.

I could go on, but the website for the Magical Mystery WeMachine is here. It’s a much nicer experience than reading my anti-Apple bile-filled prose. And Fifi will complain if I keep going on about how crap Apple actually are.

geek (proof)

Moore’s Law has been around now for the last 40 years, and every 20 months or so, it gets twice as long and complicated as before (or have I misunderstood this?) In the spirit of its recent anniversary, I present the following:

Table 1: Minimum system requirements for Microsoft Windows, by version:

Version          RAM            Processor            Free Hard disk    Year
                                                     space
3.1              1MB             286                   6.5MB           1992
95               4MB             386DX                  55MB           1995
NT4              16MB            Pentium chip          110MB           1996
98               16MB            486DX66               355MB           1998
2000             64MB            Pentium 133             2GB           2000
ME               32MB            Pentium 150           320MB           2000
XP               128MB           Pentium 300           1.5GB           2001
Vista            512MB           800MHz chip            15GB           2007
7                1GB             1GHz chip              16GB           2009
                                 (+DX9 video card)