# Everything you could possibly want to know about kidney stones without having to experience the excrutiating pain.
Jade [e] said sorry about the kidney stone :( I went here when I had one and it was pretty good. www.urostonecenter.com although they don't have any urologists listed in the UK.
-jade [added 3rd Nov 2003]
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# To put a bit of financial flesh on the bones of my
suggestion that Philip Greenspun's purposeful communities message doesn't reach smaller website builders,
this fellow was given prices of $4000 to $13,500 for an
Oracle license for machines that are somewhat weedier than Philip
suggests.
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# Ticked off another item on the list-of-things-that-tell-you-you're-getting-older. I've already covered
- wife
- pet cat
- mortgage
- two pet cats
- larger mortgage
- pet dog
- baby
And now I've got
covered too.
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# Reviewing my referrer logs this morning, I discovered that
Yahoo rates this site top when you search for
u k protitutes.
This is perhaps the most roundabout way there is to discover a spelling mistake on your website.
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# Despite the efforts of organisations like
Stand and
FIPR, the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was passed into law and took effect
yesterday, so be careful where you surf at work.
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#Is there anybody out there?
Completed my 300th
SETI@home (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence At Home) unit today. That's small beer compared to
some, but it's
more than most.
A few years ago, this project would probably have made the news by building the biggest computer yet seen. They have vast swathes of data gathered from the Arecibo Radio Telescope (costar in at least one Bond film), and they'd have needed a computer the size of medium size tower block to process it all in a reasonable time.
But not today. Today, lots of people have small Internet-connected computers which spend most of their time doing nothing (even when they're being used they spend most of the time waiting for you to press the next key). The SETI@home project takes advantage of the spare processing power by sending your computer a small piece of its data to chew over. Magnify that by 2 million (the current number of users) and you've got a bigger 'virtual' supercomputer than you could ever hope to build. The SETI@home project then only need a mediumish box in the middle to glue the results back together. Cool and cheap!
If your PC sits on your desk humming away doing nothing most of the day, why not download the software and donate your spare cycles?
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# Trundled down to London on Friday afternoon to see web-god
Philip Greenspun give a talk. I've read his
book (which I thoroughly recommend to anyone building a website) and lot of his articles, so I knew what to expect and got it. He's funny, sounds arrogant but is also quite self-depracating, got some good stories about his dog, and knows very definitely what he thinks.
The central thrust of his book and of his talk is that to succeed, a website must build a purposeful community. He illustrates this with various websites of his own and of his company ArsDigita's clients. He talks a lot about the technology you would use to build your site with, which comes down to Solaris+Oracle+AOLServer+ArsDigita Community System (ACS). Sadly this is where his message can go astray for smaller websites. AOLServer and ACS are free and open source, but you need a reasonable amount of cash to sling around, to afford to have your own Solaris box and the necessary people to look after your Oracle installation.
If you're a smaller company, a one-man-band, or a cash-strapped charity, a $10/month web service account with CGI facilities and a MySQL database might be all you can afford. This kind of low end setup makes Philip's solution look somewhat out of reach. This isn't that surprising - he works at the well-kitted out MIT computing labs and his company deals in high-traffic websites for well-heeled companies. It's what he knows. (To be fair, he and his company do offer a number of excellent free services to other websites - polling, comments, uptime monitors, etc. They also do a lot of work for charities. The provide education and training for free when other companies typically charge thousands of dollars for. They gave out beer and pizza at the talk. They're ok, I reckon.)
Just because the technology's out of reach doesn't mean the idea of a purposeful community is invalid too though. It isn't, and is just as desirable for small websites as it is large ones. There is a very definite technological middle ground to be explored between the two extremes of no-tech flat HTML files on your Freeserve account and big-tech Solaris box of your own which isn't being examined as well as it might.
I've thought for a while that I would probably enjoy working for his company, ArsDigita. Now, having seen him speak, and having talked briefly with him and also with Eve Andersson, I know I would.
By the way, he's shorter than he looks in this photo.
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# The
Slashdot Stupid Patents contest has finished. Sadly, I didn't think the winners were as good as the idea Roblimo's Zero-Click Shopping idea he gave when the competition was announced.
Even more disappointing none of the examples where as stupid as this real example. That's right, somebody was granted a patent to protect the howlingly novel idea of sticking a bit of plastic on a screen to protect it.
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# I can't decide if
Am I HOT or NOT is an exercise in cheap laffs, stereotyping or brutal truth telling.
Perhaps I should set myself a 'hotness' target, submit myself and see if I hit it?
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# Have a look at
http://www.requiemforadream.com/, the promo site for Daron Aronofsky's new film. I'm not normally very keen on this kind of Flash-animated, groovy-graphics, no-words website, but I enjoyed it.
Thanks to chum Tom for this, who describes it as the craziest thing since breakfast.
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# Saw the newly named Grace yesterday. Realised that Daniel isn't a baby any more, he's a little boy. It's incredible what a difference seven months make. In another seven he'll be walking and talking. Blimey.
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#Double wammy
For the second time in two weeks, I've gone and bought a copy of a book I already own. This time it's
Hellboy, Seed Of Destruction.
Anybody fancy it? It is a really good comic. So good I bought it twice, in fact.
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#It's a girl
As I predicted (although not here unfortunately). I'm hit four out of four for guessing the sex of people's unborn babies now. Should probably pack it in now, as failure no doubt awaits me otherwise.
Nattle finally got home just before seven, having attended the entire proceedings. Helen had planned a domino* delivery, but finished up having a epidural quite late on, so she's being kept in hospital for a day. Knowing Helen she'll probably discharge herself this afternoon though.
Nat's very excited about the whole affair, and didn't seem tired despite having been up for over 24 hours and not having eaten since breakfast yesterday. Being involved in a birth 'from the other side' puts a whole new perspective on it, which not many women get these days I guess.
*Domino - domicillary in-and-out. Once you start labour, you call your midwife and she comes out to you. Assuming your labour progresses normally, you only go into hospital for the delivery, a lot later than you would generally. The same midwife attends the birth. You're then discharged 6 hours after the birth, again assuming everything is ok, and you feel up to it.
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#House full of dogs
Our friend Helen is, as I write, pregnant but by tomorrow morning she won't be. The prelabour warning bells have been ringing for a couple of days, and she and Nat been trying like mad to get the whole labour thing into action. Today they succeeded, using the obvious method of a nice cup of tea, a piece of cake, and brisk (though brief) walk home.
Nat's round at Helen and Tom's now cheering her on, and I've brought their two dogs back here for the night. Dogs can be very comforting in times of stress, but they do get excited when people are shouting, and the last thing you want when you're trying to have a baby is a pair of overeager Labradors sticking their noses in your wotsits.
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#If you like BIRDHOUSES then check this out please?
Please send a snail mail with your first name and email address to the
address below. PLEASE PRINT THANKS!
Redwood Birdhouses
4724 Murphy Rd. #25
Franklin, NC 28734
U.S.A.
We will email you the URL, plus all information regarding our line of
handcrafted quality made birdhouses so you can view them the day we get
your request.
NO THIRD PARTY INVOLVED . WE WILL NOT SELL OR TRADE YOUR EMAIL
OR ANY INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM YOU !!
This is, without a doubt, the strangest piece of spam I have ever received. Please send us your email address by post so we can send you our URL? Duh? Let's say I did 'like' bird houses, and fancied one to nail up in my garden. I might, just might, visit a URL given in the email, although the possibility of me buying one is still pretty small. But I'd have to be a raving birdbox fetishist to be bothered to write my email address on a piece of paper and put in in the post, so that they can email me their URL where, eventually, I can look at the pretty pictures.
At least they won't pass my name on to the RSPB.
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# Wired -
The way current regulations are written, you could probably get a patent for the practice of selling hair dryers over the Internet. If two congressional Democrats get their way, the days of "obvious" business practice patents are numbered.
NewsForge - An often raucous debate on the effect of patents on the Internet ended Tuesday night with a leading cyberlaw expert calling for a moratorium on most business-related software patents and the director of the U.S. Patent Office saying Congress has tied his hands.
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#Daniel's tooth is visible!
But only if you poke him very hard and get him to scream so he opens his mouth really wide.
anonymous said my friend is called daniel tooth and he is well fit [added 11th Mar 2006]
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#Slightly vexed
A few days ago, I was belting across the web on a trail of more or less random links. I went from
here on to
here, picked up some stuff about Iain McCaig designing Darth Maul, which lead me
here and before you know it I'm in the full flush nostalgia, bidding for stuff
here.
I bid for a copy of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. My brothers and I loved it, subsequently buying loads of other Fighting Fantasy books and eventually getting into board games and RPGs proper. It arrived in the post yesterday. This morning, as I parked myself on the sofa in the attic to unwrap it, I glanced across at the bookshelf.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
Already on the shelf.
Right in the middle of the middle shelf, square in my eyeline.
What a prat.
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#He'll be bringing girls home next
Little bloke's first tooth is through this morning. You can't quite see it, but if you stick your finger in his mouth you can definitely feel it.
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