<insert crazy ramblings here>

Girl Genius is an excellent steampunk mad science comic.

It's absolutely brilliant in it's own right, but I love some of the small touches. Check out the the birds in this last panel, and these fantastic sneaky shout outs to a few other webcomics.

In today's comic the music is provided by the P.D.Q Bach engine.

I heard a radio show about him a while ago. He's the creation of a musical satirist in the States. The name coming from the fact that Johann Sebastian Bach had many children who are generally referred to by their three initials. He performs with a full orchestra, or just a kazoo. I don't know enough about classical music to get all the jokes, but if you know your Baroque from your Romantic, he's probably worth tracking down. And absolutely perfect for a the Mad Science Pantomime Ball.

Neil Gaiman interviews Terry Pratchett.
seen at Ducker's Delicious Dump

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I don't what amuses me more. Victorian ladies sewing tiny pants* onto their copy of the Bayeux Tapestry or that they were called the Leek Embroidery Society.

*middle of the three small images.

Seen in an old Cloud Chamber

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M.P.A.A. send takedown letters accusing printers of downloading movies. One frame at a time presumably.

Gorgeous photos of astronauts in orbit.
I love these images so much.
The eighth one has a lovely brassy dohicky that is so steampunk.

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Why writers groups are a a good idea.

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Alcohol Linkdump
DIY flavoured vodkas, mead by mail, and the discovery that people who binge drink , hang out with people who go out and get drunk.

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“The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible”: Oscar Wildeon fox hunting.
I thought it was "The incomprehensible pursuit of the inedible".

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The good ship Righteous Indignation. Brilliant name for a rebel frigate.

Amusing bit of flash fiction. What if wiki fiddlers had use of time machine?.

seen at Neil's single editor wiki.

Particularly appropriate give the edit-fest going on at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arthur_C._Clarke#Date_of_Death>Arthur C. Clarke</a>'s entry today.

Given that I seem to be the Modal Average age for a Ravelry knitter, I've just requested an account.

I've currently got a couple of small swatchy projects on the go, mostly to just to practice with. I've just bought some black wool for my first real project. I liked the idea of a computer terminal green on black scarf, but couldn't find the right shade of green. Then I realised I have a little yellow wool, so I'm tempted to do a Portal scarf. With an Aperture Science logo on one end and a slice of cake on the other. Maybe I'll end up on the Portal fan site.

I think GLaDOS would like these potentially fatal works of art more though.
seen at starslip crisis's temporal log.

Note to self: Smallest and Largest possible Aperture logo references.

"since aged fourteen everyone my age typed like they'd fallen face first onto a keyboard."

My old blog had a set of posts titled "Nice Turn of Phrase". I think I'll try and resurrect that. This one goes out to anyone who has to deal with children's writing.

A little while ago^[1] I ran into the list of Geek Social Fallacies. The things that some geeks think, that taken to extremes, make their social lives harder.
( How do they apply to me )
Now to explain how those affect me I'll have to talk about the circles I move in.



The Friend Wheel application from Facebook puts all your friends as points around the outside, and draws lines between them if they know each other. In this example most of the user's friends know each other. My wheel looks slightly different.



Starting from the top, and going anticlockwise, the Joinees, Alt.Alumni.Warwick users, the ex-Radio Warwick presenters, people from my school days, colleagues from my last job, and smattering of others including: SF fandom, webcomic artists, and friend of a friends.

I'm not so far into GSF #4 that I take liberties with my friends' friends. What happens is that I think everyone is really lovely and would get on with everyone else, so try to encourage my different groups to merge. I've been doing this since school days, when I dragged kids from my neighborhood and school to drama.

One side effect of GSF #4 is that I've been responsible for introducing a few couples to each other. I only ever see this in retrospect. I never mean to play cupid, but it is nice.

[1] GSF seen at the Nice Guy article, via Mango's offensive grocery.

Oh and as an aside, if you got this far;
How do you pronounce clique: click or cleek?

Just spotted a really useful clipboard feature in the text editor I use.

I supports: Cut, Copy, Paste, and Swap.

Swap the highlighted text with the clipboard text. Genius!

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What would Richard Feynman do?

“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing…”

“The gravitational force is weak,” he said at one conference, introducing his work on quantizing gravity. “In fact, it’s *damned* weak.” At that instant a loudspeaker demonically broke loose from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. Feynman barely hesitated: “Weak — but not negligible.”

Seen at Bad Science.

The two biographies about him are great. Essentially a series of anecdotes about him, told by one his mates.

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The XO is the "lowest power laptop ever made, its the greenest laptop ever-made, it's the only sunlight readable laptop on the market, it's more rugged than a Toughbook, it's in the Museum of Modern Art for it's look ... 15 times lower [in power consumption] than any other laptop on the market. The Mesh networking extends the reach of a single access point as the wifi signals can hop from laptop to laptop to reach the children living the farthest from the school. ... we can run off of solar during the day and handcrank at night for an additional $25 or so per student – this is one-time expense – the solar panel and the crank will last 10 or perhaps 20 years. ... The XO batteries last for 5 years and cost less than $10 to replace. Finally, the XO is the greenest laptop ever made.

From Groklaw's interview with the founding Chief Technology Officer of One Laptop Per Child project.

This thing sounds seriously nifty. I hope they do the Give One, Get One scheme in Europe at some point.

I've missed the first day of Agnostica, "the only truly secular winter celebration". but I'm not too late to participate in the global Random Bag of fun. I missed last year, but I've participated in the previous two. It's great. Slightly geeky gifts for all!

Macroeconomic effects (such as recession, and recoveries) in a 1970's babysitter's co-op.
seen at major_clanger's moonbase.

Teach your geeklet to read with Cthulhu.
Illustrated by Erica Hhenderson

And finally a rather nifty recipe for Lemonade. I wonder if it works mulled?

Quick Meme I just made up.

How often do you use upper class, and middle class words?

My score: 16/30. Slightly Posh.

I was particularly amused by Cheers / Good Health, as I almost always make people drink to good health for the first drink with a meal :)