Neil Hopcroft

Nothing interesting yet, please move along…. http://www.payphone-project.com/payphones/uk/

I know I’ve only posted links and no real content for the last couple of days, but bear with me, I’ll do something interesting sooner or later. In the meantime, here’s a Jesus of the week.

Any Oxford people out there who could put up a little lost Neilh for a couple of days after Whitby? Probably Monday through Wednesday, but plans not set in stone yet.

I was intrigued to note these vulnerabilities and would bet good money there are hundreds more such defects in that code. It is trivial to test for this kind of vulnerability if you put a bit of thought into it but nobody bothers.

Carbage or carnage? A different solution to the visibility problems of rear spoilers.

This article suggests that, contrary to popular belief the Japanese can’t organise an orgy in a brothel…”We were not involved in systematic prostitute-buying.” said one of the company officials, “Perhaps some of the employees may have done something like that (in their free time) and that may have led to a misunderstanding”.

So I’ve managed the first tranche of mp3 recoding and trawled around town with the new player (its a Panasonic SV-SD80S SD Audio Player) yesterday and today. If fits comfortably in my shirt pocket, contains just over three hours of music (and has space for another two or so) on a 256Mb card, it cuts out all the local conversation that I’m not going to understand anyway, and it tells the time.

There are a few audio artifacts in there but I’m guessing thats ‘cos that batch took an extra recoding from 96kbps mp3 to 96k aac because I’d ticked the wrong option in the jukebox program, they sound a little like tape flutter so it was disconcerting when I first noticed it but not a problem once I’d gotten used to it.

No idea what battery life is like yet, but I’ve run through all of the 3 hours of music at least once and done a bit of messing around so far, if it turns out to be that bad its got a case that’ll take a standard AA battery. Disturbingly I compared the player to my watch (which I no longer use since it irritates my skin) and they’re give-or-take the same size and weight. The mp3 player is a little more square around the corners and a little thicker in patches but its not exactly big.

Was it a worthwhile purchase? Dunno yet but all the signs are good so far, after the initial annoyance with the software (or lack of).

For todays lunch I had some cheese rolls with the inspiring slogan:

“Keep Yamazakis Table Rolls ready in your bread basket. Serve it at berakfast, brunch, or dinner. So you can express your thoughtfulness through our Table Rolls.”

Haneda here we come

Thank you to thepaintedone for pointing out this link.

After you get past the exploration of Michael Moores character deficiencies there is an interesting discussion about the capitalism and responsibility. This covers nearly everything I’ve been thinking about western society, I’m going to have to read more by (and about) Lasch.

Of course, I’m also left wondering how many of those traits I suffer, but thats just paranoia, isn’t it?