I have just seen an excellent flash movie, retelling ancient Super Mario Bros folklore of the late 1980s. Created by Alexanderleon, it uses the simple pixellated sprites of those old NES games combined with a moving soundtrack and a script to rival Lord of the Rings. Most enjoyable for anyone who knows what a “koopa trooper” is.
Via M!lo
Well, the title is pretty self explanatory really, but picture if you will: You have just bought something and are awaiting change. You are holding your wallet/purse in your left hand. A cashier puts a five pound note into the palm of your right hand, followed by several coins placed on top of the note. Now, you have to attempt to undo the coin compartment of your chosen money-holding device, whilst preventing any of the coins slipping from their precarious position atop the fiver. Ok, not the greatest dilemma ever to face humankind, but mildly irritating all the same.
There have been many “Tenth planet discovered”-type headlines in the media recently. The “planet” in question, spied by NASA-funded researchers, has been unofficially named Sedna after the Inuit goddess of the sea. It is almost twice as far from the sun as Pluto and about two-thirds of its diameter.
Déja-vu anyone? Similarly ill-informed headlines were bandied around in 2002, with the discovery of Quaoar, another distant body orbiting the sun. Several other small bodies have been found and astronomers expect to find more, possibly one even larger than Pluto. Whether or not such objects can be called planets isn’t important, it just depends how you define the term. But if anything, Pluto’s status as a planet is beginning to look increasingly hard to justify. Perhaps it is just the closest of many small, distant iceballs.
I’m getting broadband tomorrow (yey!). It’s ADSL from Freedom2Surf. I’ve read decent reviews and it is fairly cheap at £22.50 per month.
I spent the morning trying to find 2 microfilters in town. (They’re little adaptors to separate the internet data from voice calls.) At last I found some in Currys, but two would have cost me over 25 quid! Then I remembered a small local computer business. The guy there proudly informed me that they had 178 in stock. “Erm, just two please”. �9 pounds in all including an A4-sized reciept for doodling on. Moral of the story: Don’t let Currys rip you off.
LinkMachineGo linked to Curve Ball a while back. It’s an addictive 3D pong-type game. Alas, I can’t get past level 7. I can’t imagine there are many people who read my little blog yet do not peruse the excellent LinkMachineGo, but if you are such a person then those links were for you!
It’s very easy for someone in their early 20s to forget that Spain is a new democracy. The current king of Spain was involved in leading the country from dictatorship to freedom. He can claim most of the responsibility for saving the nation from an attempted military coup 23 years ago. His appearance on spanish television sets on the day of the bombings must have been a strong reminder for the grieving spanish of what they have fought for, and what they have to protect.
I was touched by Angelique Chrisafis’ column on the reaction of the spanish people to this tragedy:
“It must be related to September 11. It must be,” said a 16-year-old. “The scale of it, the simultaneous attacks. It had to be them. Nobody in Spain could do that to other Spaniards, surely?”
“Why now? Why when everyone has liberty, everyone has everything they want in Spain?” asked a 55-year-old grandmother
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