Less Than Daily

I don’t have anything against the Welsh accent, but it’s never one that I’ve thought of as anything special.

Apologies here to Gareth who inexplicably, despite not being Welsh, or (to the best of my knowledge) ever living near Wales, speaks with a Welsh accent.

Over the past few days I’ve gotten into listening to some old Catatonia songs, and, for some weird reason, I just love the way Cerys sings the word “Rage” in the song “Road Rage”.

And yeah I know this post was pointless, when I started writing it I thought something would occur to either make it mean something, or be funny ... I managed neither

But there should be a Monkeys Like Us due to publish at 6, go read that instead

Posted by mcphee on 09/10 at 05:58 PM
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I’ve been reading a science book lately..

I should point out, I never bothered with Science at school, I am not into Science, or interested in Science, and I do not make a habit of reading science books..

But this one got me curious .. it was number 1 in the bestseller lists, and is written by travel writer Bill Bryson.

So I thought I’d give it a go, and it’s great!

I never knew science was so interesting..

Every physical body has it’s own gravitational pull, the bigger you are, the stronger the pull. So when you’re sat at your desk .. your paperclips are actually straining to move towards you. They don’t actually move, because the gravity of the earth is much stronger, and your gravitational pull is weaker than the friction they’d have to overcome to move across the desk.. but just to know that the little guys are sat there on the desk straining to get closer to you is pretty cool.

You never actually touch anything. You’re made up of billions of atoms. The electrons in your atoms react to the electrons in anything near you, and as both are negatively charged, they repel each other. So whilst you think you’re sitting on a chair, your electrons are repelling you away from it, so you’re actually hovering. If your electrons weren’t negatively charged, you’d simply pass ghostlike through other supposedly solid items. Again pretty cool.

Your atoms have lifespans themselves of millions of years. When you die, and decompose, your atoms wander off and find new things to become. Some of you may become a new leaf growing on a tree, some of your atoms join others in becoming a squirrel, and so on. And because this has obviously been going on forever, it is reckoned that every person alive today has about a million atoms that were once part of Shakespeare, and another million that were once Genghis Khan. Which again, is pretty cool.

About 2 or 3 extinction level comets pass through the Earths orbit every day (luckily the orbit is pretty huge), but statistically we’re overdue an impact. Because space is HUGE, the chances of us seeing the comet coming are minute. The most notice we’re likely to get before impact is .. one second..

There is so much more I want to write, but I’m getting boring, I’d recommend anyone who hasn’t read it, to buy the book. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson… who’d of thought science could be interesting!

Posted by mcphee on 07/20 at 06:00 PM
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I have a few friends who lap up everything Michael Moore says with, (what appears to me) an incredible amount of gullibility, and astounding failure to actually apply common sense to what they see on the screen.

It’s “cool” to diss George W and the ‘Corporate world’, and government conspiricies are always popular. Moore plays on this, and uses it to disguise some shoddy ideas, and (it seems) blatant mistruths.

Obviously his stuff is politically motivated. I’m not American, I don’t care either way about George W, neither should anyone else who isn’t American / being invaded by America.

I sat down and watched Bowling for Columbine, I was fairly skeptical already, but was looking forward to watching it, so tried to keep an open mind.

...he pointed the camera at some stupid Americans, and let them make themselves look stupid. Then used the ridiculous things they said as ‘evidence’.

One gimp reckoned he was number 3 on the FBI’s wanted list after the Oaklahoma bombings .. why? .. because he owned a copy of The Anarchists Handbook. Utter rubbish! But I’ve had friends telling me that in America you can get sent to jail simply for checking the wrong book out of the Library ... rubbish! why would the librarys stock those books?

His reporting is not impartial, there is no middle ground, so even the facts in his report are well hidden by the huge bias he adds.

I write this having only seen Bowling for Columbine, I haven’t read his books, or seen Farenheit 911 .. it may be that BfC is universally accepted as the worst piece of work he’s ever done .. but I doubt it.

Quite how he is able to convince people who I know are intelligent to believe his every word without applying their own judgement is something I really don’t understand… ?

Posted by mcphee on 07/20 at 05:31 PM
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Since I moved the site and have had to rebuild from scratch, I’ve decided to change the layout slightly ... in my messing around with css I’ve come up again and again against the problems with different browsers looking at identical source code, and displaying the results differently.

The new look I’m testing looks fantastic with Mozilla, or Firebird, with all sorts of tranparancies and watermarks going on.. but not as good with Internet Explorer.

The reason rebuilding the site takes so long is that, I get it looking good in one browser, then have to make compromises to get it to display also in a seconds, and then more for a third .. and so on.

I know from statistics that 102.6% of internet users use Internet Explorer, but it doesn’t matter to me what internet users in general use, what matters is what YOU use to view my site.

There’s no point me messing around trying to get the site Opera compatible if nobody uses it.

So ...

What browser (and version) do you use?

If anyone reading this could take a few seconds to add a comment on the link below, then .. thank-you

If you use a wide variety of browsers, just mention the main one, if you use a different one at work than at home, then mention both.

It would also be useful to know what screen resolution you use, but that’s far less important, so dont worry if you don’t know the answer.

Posted by mcphee on 07/09 at 03:56 PM
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You can win a real donkey!

2nd prize is just as good, a blow up donkey!

And to find out if you’ve won, the instructions are “blow up your empty carton, put it on it’s side and carefully jump on it” Once it’s burst you can check the inside to see if you’ve won. - fantastic

I shall be drinking nothing but Ribena til this competition is finished

Posted by mcphee on 06/03 at 01:23 PM
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