Ok, I’ll start off by pointing out that it is far from being the first time I’ve done this, but hopefully it will be the last. I’ve cleaned up my email inbox (or rather inboxes, all 12 of them, but we’ll stick with the singular) and it has now been totally empty for a couple of days.
Having been abandoned for the evening, I was feeling rather peckish, and all we had in were eggs, so I decided to poach a couple. The eggs in question are earmarked to go into the incubator tomorrow, and should emerge as cute baby chicks in exactly three weeks.
For some reason, it felt rather odd eating these eggs, compared to ‘normal’ eggs. This was doubly strange, considering that I ultimately intend to eat them anyway when they become big fat chickens.
As an aside, something else that’s odd is that pretty much everybody who discovers that we intend to eat our happy and healthy chickens expresses their horror with a “how could you?” and then zips off down to Tesco to purchase a tortured beast that is frankly lucky to be dead, having spent its ‘life’ in a dark cage.
Anyway, back to my ‘point’ (there isn’t really one of course) - a vegan wouldn’t eat the egg no matter what, that seems pretty straightforward, but I believe that a vegetarian would eat an egg. However, at some point during the next three weeks, it will magically turn into something they wouldn’t eat. When does that happen? At the point where we said “these eggs are going in the incubator”? Tomorrow? Next week? When it hatches?
I can’t figure it out, but they were very tasty eggs anyway.
On (kind of) the same subject as my last post, is it just me that finds the whole Harry Potter circus rather depressing? While I’m sure the books are very good (from what I can tell, I’m the only person in the world, child or adult, not to have read one) can it be a good thing that such an excess of attention is focussed in one direction? There’s a whole world of literature out there.
In this post, Andrew Fenn gives an interesting example of a technique for keeping automated sign-up bots out of a phpBB2 forum, although naturally the method applies universally.
Techniques along these lines are incorporated into a variety of ‘mods’ for phpBB2, although I’m not aware of one that does specifically what Andrew proposes. The most effective I’ve used to date has to be Anti-SPAM ACP, but even this is less effective than it used to be.
In the end though, the best (perhaps the only) defence against bots is to be unique, or as near as possible. Once any solution becomes widespread, it becomes worthy of the attention of a bot developer, at which point it is broken. Homogenous environments in computing, whether they be bulletin boards or operating systems, inevitably make easy targets for bots and spam.
More generally, I think homogenousness is almost always a bad thing - diversity in a species helps ensure continuity rather than extinction in the event of major environmental change, for example. How about a homogenous political system where all the parties are essentially the same and you might as well not bother voting? Can homogenousness ever really a good thing, I wonder. Answers on a postcard please.
Fortunately I haven’t really been eating dog food, I’m talking metaphorically. It started when I ‘accidentally’ purchased an Amiga 500 on Ebay for a fiver, and found that the only Amiga software I had in the house was a still-shrinkwrapped copy of one of my own games, a flight sim called Dogfight - 80 Years of Aerial Warfare. (In the US it was called Air Duel I think)
The first thing I was hit with was the ‘DRM‘, in the form of a “please enter 12 from page 47, paragraph 3 of the manual” question. A classic way to irritate your paying customers repeatedly, while the so-called pirates (arrrrr!) get off scot free. Of course, these days far more devious and dastardly schemes sail the high seas, but it did remind me of various other similar copy-protection fiascos I should be ashamed to have been involved in, so I’ll probably write more about them another day.
The next realisation was that it was really a PC game, shoehorned onto the Amiga, and really needing at least an A1200 rather than the comparitively sluggish A500. It did keep me amused for an hour or so, but all in all it wasn’t a very rewarding experience. Like most (but not all) old games, the memory is better than the reality, and probably best left that way. Suffice to say the game, and manual, have gone back in the box and will probably stay there for a long time.
In fact, until I get hold of some software, the Amiga is going back in the box as well, to sit in the loft with the countless other old computers.
The ducklings are now on the loose in the orchard during the day, but still going back indoors to the garage at night. Luckily this is an easy process, no sheepdog required, since all eight move as a single tightly-packed unit and can be easily ’steered’ around.
The young chickens are not quite sure what to make of them though, and much fun was had today herding the ducks towards them and watching them scatter left, right and centre. I tried to capture the excitement on video, but I guess you had to be there:
Talking of the young chickens, they’re doing very well. Unlike the ducklings, they’re extremely friendly and like nothing more than to be picked up and stroked. They have no idea that they’re going to end up on my dinner plate, and that’s just the way it should be. In the meantime, they’re a happy bunch, at least when the ducklings are not bearing down on them.
According to research funded by ‘The Tea Council’, tea is really good for you. Whatever next?
Hmm, I’d never heard of Dr Gillian McKeith before Sunday, when I for some strange reason picked up one of her “Energy Bars” in Morrisons. I figured any food with Dr Anybody on it had to be good for a laugh.
People keep asking me what’s wrong with it. The answer is usually “how long have you got?” It’s not just that it’s pointless, slow, wasteful and just plain rubbish. It’s much worse.
Here is a more complete answer, if you’re interested. If I’ve directed you to this particular blog entry (and let’s face it, why else would you be here?), it means I don’t want you to ask me about it again until you’ve followed that link and read it. 