Furthermore: August 2005

August 26, 2005

Sky Freesat

Well, the NTL TV contract was coming up to the point where we’d have to start paying for it, and then it stopped working properly anyway (a little box saying “Loading” appeared in the screen and lots of features stopped working on the remote). So rather than face their customer service again, we just had Freesat installed and It. Just. Works. All the same free channels, �150 install and that’s it. You can upgrade to proper Sky at any time if you want to.

Of course, even cancelling a service with NTL is painful. The woman wanted to know why I wanted to cancel (I told her), and then launched into a long explanation of why it would be more expensive for me. No doubt this performance was more for her benefit than mine, but it still shows the contemptuous view NTL have of their customers.

NTL are you listening? We still have phone from you, but if anything goes wrong with it, we’re out the door and never coming back.

Sentences ending with prepositions

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages - I first saw it on Groggs when I was at university. Credit to Jonathan Partington, inventor of the March March March, who would also have been my Director of Studies had he not left Fitz after he interviewed me, for posting this.

A traveller was showing a geologist friend around Duke Bluebeard’s castle.

“One used to be able to look out down on to the plain,” he said, “but it looks as if the Duke has taken the window the plain could be looked out down on to out of away.”

“I wonder,” pondered the geologist, “what he has walled the window the plain was looked out down on to out of up with.”

“I should like to find someone to take the question of what he took the window the plain was looked out down on to out of away for up with.”

“Or indeed what it is walled up with,” murmured the other.

Out of the darkness, the Duke’s voice was heard:

“I am the one to take the question of what I walled that view I could no longer put up with up with up with.”

I’m sure there are longer strings possible, indeed I’m sure I vaguely remember an Archimedeans article with an inductive proof that an arbitrarily large number could be achieved, but I like the neatness of “up with up with up with”.

August 12, 2005

Gmap Pedometer running routes

I saw the Google maps hack this guy did (he wanted to work out distances for running) so I saved my basic 3 running routes around Cambridge:

• round the city - about 6 miles


• Cherry Hinton Park (includes a hill) - about 5 miles



• Nine Wells - somehow the URL for this got lost - I’ll re-record it.

Hey - 2 years blogging as of a couple of days ago.

August 3, 2005

Links

Yes, I know, it wasn’t meant to be a link blog, but I want to get rid of what I keep accumulating in delicious, since I seem to be no nearer to actually integrating my delicious stream into a sidebar

• Whiskey Bar - quite old now, but a post that sums up some of the reaction to the re-election of Bush. I kind of think that come the next US election, we’ll either be looking at this and laughing at how over-wrought we all got about the Christian Right and Neo-Cons, or it will seem horribly prescient.


• via delicious popular links - wildly inappropriate Japanese ad for The Passion of Christ


• Drowning By Numbers - my favourite Greenaway film, and not just because it has Joely Richardson in it. Greenaway’s site has a lot of interesting stuff, although it’s not so easy to navigate. I like the idea of DBN as a version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff which he mentions. Lots of notes on symbolism, where all the numbers are, list of games, stars etc.