This is rare. A possible clue to finding out… just who is The Stig?
Autoblog posted this photo, taken with flash which temporarily rendered The Stig’s visor tint transparent…
What Jessie Did Next...
...being the inane ramblings of a mundane Yorkshire bird.
Author: Jess (page 15 of 26)
I’m listening to ‘The News Quiz’ on Radio 4 at the moment. Our little DAB radio in the kitchen has consistently been displaying the wrong information for both ‘The News Quiz’ and ‘Just A Minute’ regarding the participants for the entire series of both.
Right now it’s telling me Armando Ianucci’s on it. He isn’t. It’s Jack Dee.
Special.
With Microsoft’s announcement that they’ll be opening up their binary file formats from Office, I read with interest Joel Spolsky’s reasons why MS Office formats are so complicated – it certainly explains an awful lot.
(I’d strongly suggest reading Spolsky’s books and essays – they’re often insightful and you learn a lot.)
Ben’s lunch had RSS mashed potato.
A rather amusing look at the Apple product cycle. Seems to tick all the boxes 😛
Trekmovie.com is reporting that the upcoming Star Trek movie has been pushed back to May 2009, apparently as part of a bigger reshuffle at Paramount. No proper confirmation yet but I’m sure they’ll have something there soon. So, two days after my 35th birthday.
After a long wait, Mac OS X 10.5.2 is out and available in Software Update.
My MacBook Pro took 3 reboots I think before it was back to the desktop, and then a “Leopard Graphics Update” appeared! I’ll give it a bit of hammer today and see how it performs, but I’m already pleased with the ‘list view’ in Stacks – I can have a sort-of ‘start button’ to list all my applications again, something I really miss in OS X.
I just heard this morning by word-of-mouth that Planet Rock is to cease broadcasting:
“…the owners are looking to shut their 4 DAB stations because they are losing listeners. According to the Guardian Planet Rock is continuing to add listeners while the others shed them. Surely, if GCap don’t want Planet Rock, someone else must recognise a good thing when it’s out there.”
Also in the cull is TheJazz, a ‘sister’ station to ClassicFM which I enjoyed as well.
News elsewhere:
- Station profile at GCap’s own site.
- Press release referring to closure of ‘non-core brands’ here.
- BBC article about it here.
- Reuters article here.
Thanks to John Popham on Facebook’s Planet Rock group for the first bits of info. Knowing how faithful the Planet Rock fanbase is, I can’t see this being a ‘going quietly’ thing, and I must admit I’ll be very surprised if it does shut down for good.
Update: Jon pointed out the Planet Rock Messageboard is full of threads about it, and noted that “…someone asked what the DJs thought about it – no responses (probably not allowed) but – ‘”Rocking In The Free World” immediately after saying “thanks for the huge number of emails today”… Subtle, but beautifully timed, I thought.”
Just a quickie note because I’m bored of relating the same data to everyone – there’s a Linux kernel exploit which seems to affect versions 2.6.17 to 2.6.24.1 and give root privs from any local user:
joel$ ./exploit
[..]
[+] mmap: 0xb7f29000 .. 0xb7f5b000
[+] root
root#
You can in some cases patch it live (!) but I’ve got at least two installations where I had to compile a new kernel.
There’s a patch at git.kernel.org, and you can test whether you’re vulnerable using milw0rm’s exploit proof-of-concept.
I’ve been wahing for the past week about wanting a Canon G9, but can’t really justify the expense right now. However, I still wanted a point’n’shoot I could take to the pub and which was slightly more discrete than carrying around the EOS 30D. Thus, when I was in London I had a wander to Morgan Computers on New Oxford Street – they specialise in remaindered and end-of-line technology.
After a bit of a wander around, I settled on a Nikon Coolpix L11 for about £50. It’s not the most advanced camera in the world but it’s quite small and reasonably easy to use and at 6MP with a reasonable control over white balance you can take some nice snaps with it. It also takes AA batteries which means in a pinch I can stuff it with Duracells from a shop round the corner. It takes SD which is cheap enough at 12 quid for 2 gig.
- Pros: Reasonable snaps (nothing to write home about), video with sound as well, very small and compact, easy to use, good non-flash stability (example), face recognition and fast focus/shutter.
- Cons: No viewfinder, you have to fiddle with white balance otherwise the flash gives a slight blue tinge (example).
Morgan don’t seem to have it listed on their website, but their Nikon page is here – note that you seem to be able to get better prices in-store, presumably because they never know what they’re going to have in from day to day. Amazon have them at about a tenner more, but if you’re wanting something you can get over the ‘Net you might as well go for something more interesting and full-featured.
As an aside I’d also give it a bit of a test in-store before leaving – with Morgan being a remainder and B-stock place, they sometimes don’t work quite as expected and it’s usually the flash that’s gone: I experienced this with the first one the guy had got out the back. Still no real hassle tho, nice folks.
As a nice bonus this weekend I got given some MDFS hardware – this was a standalone setup which ‘talked’ Econet Level 2 and Level 3, so you needn’t run the FS on a Beeb. There’s some pics of SJ Research MDFS stuff over on Chris’s site, and a more thorough rundown of what it was over here: I’ll use it to replace the A4000 doing the L4 file server probably.
I’ll take some pics and get it all working when we’ve got Ellie’s birthday done with.
Last night I stopped at Orac’s flat and we went out for dinner in Finchley. Our usual haunt was out since I’d already had fish+chips this week so he took me to ‘Izgara’, a Turkish restaurant on Hendon Lane.
I’d had a big lunch so I wasn’t in the mood for a starter and such, and jumped to the main course. Lots of interesting things on the menu alongside stuff which sounded like the sort of kebabs you get in takeaways; nothing could be further from it though. No elephant’s foot here, the meals were large and very well cooked. I went for a ‘lamb liver kebab’ – odd I know! I’ve had curried liver tikka before but this was more like a grilled liver with Turkish herbs. Very nice, and a huuuuuge plateful I couldn’t finish. Matt went for his ‘usual’, the #1 kebab which is basically sliced lamb steak.
I shall look forward to returning there for a larger meal soon 🙂
I went into Wakefield this morning to do some shopping – I favour the market over getting stuff from Sainys and co, because I actually feel they give a toss. Dropping by for some tripe this morning I was saddened to note that Hey’s Tripe Shop on the outside of the market hall is closing today. I was even more saddened to note that they were given 2 days’ notice by the owners, who presumably will be concentrating on their other business. Given that the Leeds stall closed a while ago (or hasn’t been open while I’ve been visiting), the nearest tripe shop is now Dewsbury.
Without being histrionic, this is another death-knell for Wakefield – another local specialist stall closing down. Half of the market is now car-parking as seen in this photo. Back in April 2006 I noted the lack of fishmonger in Wakefield. At least Cryer and Stott will be moving to the new market hall in May.
On another note the Ridings Centre is undergoing a facelift, with more chain-stores in the bottom where the ‘Garden’ food concessions were originally. Given that today there were at least 6 units empty with ‘To Let’ signs, one wonders if this is going to compete with the forthcoming Trinity Walk development (WMDC site here) at all.
Note: I did try to get information about the Trinity Walk development and other local stuff from the Wakefield Express website, but just came up against a brick wall with error messages and articles which ‘don’t exist’ despite the search system forwarding me. I eventually resorted to Google…
I recently happened across Shannon Brooke’s website. These are images shot in a 40s glamour pinup style, not necessarily safe for work, and great to browse through.
I particularly like this girl, who looks like she should be painted on the side of a B-52!
Just been reading on the BBC website that the Self Assessment submission page has died on the final day for submissions (giving this error).
The Service Availability page looks to be partially dead too – the stylesheet’s failing to load and without sensible fallback the information is patchy at best.
Trebles all round!
Yorkshire lass, born-and-bred. Photographs stuff, writes software, makes music, cooks, dances round the kitchen. Happy lesbinum, wife, and parent to three. Proud to have a rainbow family.
Musician, composer and producer, under the monicker of The Bleeding Obvious.
Regularly seen performing live – gig list here. Been on TV and radio in various capacities.
I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon
By day I work as a systems architect for a marine technology company. More details about all that on LinkedIn.
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