>> HARD NEWS <<
cinema queues
All is proceeding as planned: the legal beating recently
handed out to MATTHEW SOMERVILLE has merely made a "martyr"
out of the mild-mannered usability vigilante, with gangs of
young men (all, in some bizarre tribal allegiance, calling
themselves "Iain") now roaming cinema listings sites with
armfuls of precious Odeon schedules "liberated" by ad-hoc Perl
scripts of their own. (Though, speaking personally, we've
never had too many problems with www.scoot.co.uk/cinemafinder
- as long as you sidestep its most heinous interface problem
by entering high-digit postcodes like "N6" rather than the
"N1" it diligently interprets as "You are searching for BEFORE
SUNSET in N1. Please select one of the following: N1, London.
N10, London. N11, London. N12, London...", and so on.) On a
related note, the POST OFFICE seem strangely reluctant to give
their visitors access to mutually beneficial information such
as *the postcode of the person you're writing to*, with the
closure of the no-registration-required postcode database
"back door" revealed in NTK 2004-04-16. Please let us know if
you've spotted where it's disappeared to this time - or must
the public take the law into their own hands once again?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/20/letters_2007/
- just some concerned Iains doing their bit (scroll down)
http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/access/OdeonTheMissedOpportunity
- "31%" of Odeon traffic, claims outraged blog mathematician
http://www.ntk.net/2004/04/16/
- almost like they want you to give up and use email
http://www.bleb.org/tv/all.html?c=bbc1+bbc2+itv1+ch4+five
- not perfect TV info, but miles better than everything else
http://natrail.sourceforge.net/
- come hackers, free the schedules/ then you'll be free...
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
[ OK, http://www.dohthehumanity.com/ isn't quite there yet -
maybe a rating system instead of comments? - but is an easier
way to scroll through the Dohs instead of having to link to
each one individually. Still, can't believe we missed this one
(final para): http://whatnottodo.org/junk/yahoo.news.html ]...
MP3 players "set to become the must-have gadget for music
fans", muses: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3916811.stm - "must-have
gadget" for music haters = a soundproof room?... apparently
filling the brief "list some films you can think of that have
robots in": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3906257.stm ... much-
safer-for-work-than-you-actually-expected double URL-tendres:
http://www.adamsexhibitions.co.uk/ , http://vintageswank.com/
and - paradoxically - http://www.nsfw.org/ ... Widdy of week:
http://www.majesticmortgages.co.uk/keyword.asp?Keyword=a%20total%20ripoff
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
The UK's first "E-FESTIVAL" ("putting the fun back into
computer events!") - deferred until 2005. CLASSIC GAMING EXPO
UK (featuring Matthew "Manic Miner" Smith, a C5, MAME
cabinets, a raffle) - happening this weekend (10am-6pm, Sat
and Sun 2004-07-24/25, Fairfield Halls, Croydon, UKP7.50, 5.00
concessions). But of course the real action will be "going
down" at the annual UKUUG conference LINUX 2004 (from next
Thu to Sun 2004-08-05/08, tutorial and conference fees from
UKP70.00, 15.00 concessions) - at time of writing, it's not
clear from the site where in Leeds it's going to take place,
though let's not rule out the possibility that the entire town
centre may be given over to celebrating open source operating
systems, Athens Olympics-style, culminating with the glorious
"Parade of the Sysadmins" through the gaily decorated city.
http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2004/
- or perhaps just Clarence Dock Hall of Residence, Leeds Uni
http://www.cgexpo-uk.com/
- + rare showing of "WarGames" (taped off ITV last weekend?)
http://www.e-fest.co.uk/
- at Stoneleigh Park, home of the Royal Agricultural Society
http://www.dampassassins.net/
- tomorrow: MMS, waterpistols, Hoxton, Nathanity!
http://www.privacyinternational.org/bigbrother/uk2004
- and next Wednesday: 6th Annual UK Big Brother Awards
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
PERLPAD brings a Perl sensibility to the Mac - especially
the bits of the Mac you'd think were too bleachy clean to
sully. Invading the Mac's vestigial NeXT Services menu, it
lets you take text in any Cocoa app window, and run it as a
Perl program with a Command-and-a-shift-and-a-big-letter-E.
Or you can select text, hit Command-Shift-R and feed it as
STDIN to your own foul Perl one-liners. To add to the
ambience, PerlPad's interface is inpenetrable, and it's
almost impossible to install. Taking the "more than one way
to do it" thing a *little* too far, PerlPad requires you to
download a .dmg, install CocoaBones using Mac's metapackage
weirdness, *and* make Devel::SymDump using CPAN. We
estimate that's every way to install something on the Mac
without using fink and/or downloading it from Ceefax. And
the Services menu is greyed out in Mozilla, Vim and Emacs
on Aqua, so what's the bloody point? The point, as ever with
Perl, is that it's there when you reallly badly need it. And
you will. Oh yes.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/perl-pad/
- he suffered for his artistic licence, now it's your turn
>> MEMEPOOL <<
contains a source of http://snackspot.org/
the scandal Stuart Campbell came to know - as "Driv3rgate":
http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/drivergate/drivergate.htm
... Worst Photoshopped Cover Ever? (dig that Kevin Smith page
curl!): http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=11719
... reverse casemodding - dismantling all your household
appliances, and putting them in the cases of desktop PCs...
search results "slam" BBC News for excessive tabloid-ese:
http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=slam
... http://www.10eastern.com/foundphotos.html stumbles onto:
http://www.10eastern.com/images/FoundPhotos/images/6-30/im000086.jpg
- Rupert Goodwins! ... taunt a curmudgeonly numismatist:
http://www.24carat.co.uk/questionstheyaskus.html ... quite the
most unexpected "one of these not safe for work" for a while:
http://images.google.com/images?q=%22what+is+rss%22&safe=off ...
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> look forward to a fair chunk of Jonas Akerlund's oeuvre
- plus, the trailers imply, N*E*R*D's enthusiastically
gratuitous "Lapdance" - in an extended version of what they
show late-night on MTV practically every day, X-RATED: THE
VIDEOS THEY TRIED TO BAN (10pm, Sat, C4)... word is that the
new "Thunderbirds" movie is, impressively, even lamer than the
original THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO! (1.45pm, Sun, C5)... and these
aren't really five different remixes of the theme from THE
INVADERS http://www.the-invaders.com/invaders_audiomix.htm
(4.20am, Sat, C5) - but we're sure one of these sites posits
the theory that architect David Vincent is actually one of
"them" himself, secretly put on Earth to test the population's
(in)credulity... here's hoping it's the special "Director's
Cut" of ALIENS (10pm, Mon, C5), if only because that "restored
sequence" with Newt and her parents in the cab of the truck is
bloody awful... whenever we hear Grub Smith voiceovering
something like urban legend trawl 101 EMBARRASSING SEXUAL
ACCIDENTS (10.50pm, Mon, C4), we assume it's actually someone
pastiching ["Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" narrator]
Alan Ford... and middle- and working-class families remain
literally astonished at their differing lifestyles when WIFE
SWAP (9pm, Tue, C4) introduces a "fitness fanatic" to an
"internet addict", and I'M ALRIGHT JACK (sic - 9pm, Thu,
BBC2) makes a City "high-flyer" work in a hostel for the
homeless... Stew Lee gets 15 minutes out of his "Owl And The
Pussycat" material in INNER VOICES (11.15pm, Wed, Radio4)...
the inspiration behind Tony Blair's recent outburst is
revealed in BBC4 repeat I HATE THE '60S (11.20pm, Tue, BBC2)
... and C4 follows three couples considering another popular
midlife-crisis makeover in handy how-to guide SLEEPING WITH
THE AU PAIR (9pm, Wed, C4)...
AD MUSIC FOR SIX PEOPLE>> inevitably, we've been forced to
bring this rarely-popular feature back from "Blade Runner"-
style retirement by no less than 3 of you writing in to note
that, as ANDY LAWN put it, "The Danone Shape yoghurt advert
uses a tune that's an imitation of The Orb's 'Little Fluffy
Clouds' - and not the sincerely flattering kind of imitation
either", a crime compounded by not using INTERNETSDAIRY's
suggested tagline "You might still see that in the dessert":
http://www.livejournal.com/users/internetsdairy/106921.html .
DAN PEARCE ventured to get "a tad more obscure" by claiming
that "the music for the Magnum ad with people painting bulls
or somesuch is trying very hard to be Alphawezen's 'Into the
Stars'. At least that's the tune I think it's going for - it's
2 tracks before the 10CC/ Destiny's Child mix on that 2 Many
DJs album. Worth waiting for, I'm sure", while we'd just like
to mention in passing that next week's release of KING ARTHUR
is now the third film to feature Clint Poppie's "Requiem For A
Dream" theme in its trailers, the others being "Lord Of The
Rings 2: The Two Ronnies", and, er, the original "Requiem For
A Dream"? http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02003-01-03&l=239#l
... in the broader world of soundalikes, CARL MORRIS neglected
to tell us the name of "the new single by Modest Mouse" which
he alleges "sounds very reminiscent of 'Star' by James. You
can sing 'Star' on top of it, or even hum it if you don't know
the words" - though it should be fairly easy to spot from that
description. And if you can't be bothered to download the new
"Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned" Prodigy album from the
P2P nets where it so tenaciously resides, then you could
always listen to "The Fat Of The Land" again but with the
tracks in a different order - apart from (the next single?)
"Girls", which is just as good as when it was previously
released as "We Have Explosive" by The Future Sound Of London
... so, just to wrap up this week's 1990s UK acid house
retrospective, NICK BARTON devised the ideal product placement
for arguably the highlight of Orbital's output, explaining:
"Picture the scene: A young woman leaves her house to play
outside on a sunny day, without a thought for sunscreen or
anything else. Then, the scene switches: years later, the same
woman, now middle-aged, has deep wrinkles, liver spots and
skin like Tom Jones's jockstrap. Over the top of this we hear
the familiar words of: 'Well son, the funny thing about regret
is that it's better to regret something you have done than to
regret something that you haven't done. And by the way, if you
see your mom this weekend, will you be sure and tell her:
SOLTAN!! SOLTAN!! SOLTAN!!'"...
>> SMALL PRINT <<
Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that
happened last week or might happen next week. You can read it
on Friday afternoon or print it out then take it home if you have
nothing better to do. It is compiled by NTK from stuff they get sent.
Registered at the Post Office as
"Se violi questo limite metti il tuo paese a rischio"
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=hFIBc.360741%24hc5.15686769%40news3.tin.it
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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