I'm Going Slightly Mad...

Real-life Rubin vases

2006-03-14T15:19:06Z

Turn Your Head have come up with a clever idea based on the Rubin vase illusion. They're not quite vases, but you can get a wooden vase-like thing that matches the profile of your face.

elfy85 @ 2006-02-07T21:53:00

2006-02-07T21:54:31Z

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7321&category=175&issue=517

An interesting feature about the psychiatric treatment of a beautiful girl where the only drug that seems to work on her psychosis also results in massive weight gain. No real in-depth detail, but an interesting read nonetheless.

Meme thing.

2005-11-18T16:07:34Z

Leave a one-word comment that you think applies to both you and me.

It can only be one word, no more - and no duplicates please.

Then copy & paste this in your journal (if you are so inclined).

elfy85 @ 2005-11-11T11:57:00

2005-11-11T12:02:13Z

Some scientific research that may cause dilemmas for conspiracy theorists -

Some people at MIT have tested whether tin-foil* hats block radio waves. Answer: they don't. Instead, they actually amplify some radio waves - in the range allocated to the US Federal Govt. Worrying.

Research here via /. and Mind Hacks.

*Technically, aluminium-foil

elfy85 @ 2005-10-28T14:59:00

2005-10-28T14:04:49Z

Ah, the BBC. The pinnacle of broadcasting. Shame about the people who write for the website. Opening of this article about sarcasm:

They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Yeah, right. Assuming "they" are the same experts who tell us "Look before you leap" and "He who hesitates is lost", then I think we all know how incisive and invaluable their advice is.

Two paragraphs below:

Compared to the incisive brilliance of Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, simply saying the opposite of what you mean does not impress anyone with your razor-sharp repartee.

First result on google for 'sarcasm is the lowest form of wit':

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit; but therein lies the basis of all wit" ~Oscar Wilde

Lesson: If writing an incredibly dull and clichéd article, at least research it properly.

elfy85 @ 2005-10-27T16:49:00

2005-10-27T15:51:48Z

Current front-page photo from the BBC:

Is it just me, or does it look like Harriet Miers is a really bad Spitting-Image-style puppet sitting on Bush's knee?

elfy85 @ 2005-10-27T00:21:00

2005-10-26T23:22:26Z

The Tories are opposed to the new Electoral Administration Bill because it will make it easier for smaller parties - their specific example being the BNP - to stand more candidates. Genuine concern at the rise of extremism, or just concern that the BNP appeal to the same voters they do? Hmm.

Blatant, BLATANT lie of the week

2005-10-24T15:34:11Z

"It would make a great storyline watching Danny Baldwin and Janice Battersby getting to grips with lean manufacturing techniques, or planning export tactics into other countries." - Professor Scott of the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education (the worst HE institution in Britain, according to the Sunday Times tables) on how Coronation Street and other soaps show manufacturing industries in a bad light.

elfy85 @ 2005-10-12T13:15:00

2005-10-12T12:21:39Z

We had the beginning-of-year CULC squash last night. Surprisingly successful - quite a few new people turned up, and quite a few of those signed up and gave us money. And, crucially, we didn't run out of wine or biscuits.

Then towards the end, when there were only four of us still there, about to start tidying up, someone came in and asked if we were the Diplomacy Club.

Well, no, we weren't. Apparently the Diplomacy club were meant to be in that room at 5pm. But we'd booked it from 4 till 6. So maybe they were meant to be at 6 and there was a mistake or a typo. But anyway, we're all interested in international politics, so feel free to come in and have a chat to us about diplomacy while you wait.

So he did.

First thing he said: "So, is it better than Risk?"

We just managed to stop ourselves laughing long enough for him to leave.

elfy85 @ 2005-10-02T23:09:00

2005-10-02T22:11:19Z

Who needs sharks with frickin' laser beams when you can have dolphins with toxic dart guns? Now loose in the Gulf of Mexico.

In other news, I'm back in Cambridge. Woo. I have a rather nice ye-olde-stylee room this year, with panels and stuff, but unfortunately it has hardly any plug sockets, and tiny shelves and silly things like that. But it'll do.

elfy85 @ 2005-09-16T11:11:00

2005-09-16T10:14:37Z

I have now been at work for over two and a half hours (I got up too late to walk, and there was virtually no traffic for the bus, so got here far too early). In that time I have answered four phone calls. This means I am very bored, having already finished reading the paper and being a bit stuck on the crossword. But it also means I have been paid about £15 for 10 minutes actual work, which is far closer to my value than the £6.50 an hour I'm on.

elfy85 @ 2005-09-09T12:14:00

2005-09-09T11:15:34Z

Best caller of the day so far: "Er, hello, good afternoon sir. Could you please tell me where I can learn how to fly a helicopter?".

(For those who don't know, I'm working on a admissions phone line at a university.)

elfy85 @ 2005-09-08T16:22:00

2005-09-08T15:23:49Z

Hopefully at next year's LLGFF: a gay slasher film from [some of] the people behind Nightmare on Elm Street etc. The title? Hellbent. Fabulous.

elfy85 @ 2005-08-23T09:19:00

2005-08-23T08:35:56Z

Did anyone else watch the documentary Taxidermy: Stuff the World last night? It was FAB. If anyone's wondered what sort of people are attracted to skinning dead animals and then wrapping that skin around a model, this gave the answer: lunatics. Not an entirely surprising answer, sure, but these weren't just normal common-or-garden lunatics. Among others there was the reigning world champion, an awkward Swiss man who still lived with his parents and specialised in stuffing tiny fish, until he gave up taxidermy because Jesus told him to. There was a 9-year-old girl who shot a deer, sat on it while it gushed blood and her father took photos, then watched him disembowel it - she was giggling all the while, especially while she played with the heart, sticking her fingers into the aorta etc - before she stuffed it. Another guy wasn't so much insane as just incredibly callous, shooting a few springbok and monkeys to use as bait to shoot a leopard that he wanted to stuff, as well as accidentally shooting a lion... Fascinating documentary though, well worth seeing if you get the chance.

Also, via BoingBoing: Photos of balloons mid-pop. And, on the Guardian website, an experiment into whether it's possible to pass A-level sociology in two weeks. It's slightly flawed, as the article admits - particularly as the author, whom I know from uni, is pretty much a genius.

elfy85 @ 2005-08-22T10:42:00

2005-08-22T09:46:20Z

Even by the normal mind-numbing standards of this job, today is going SO slowly.

elfy85 @ 2005-08-19T13:43:00

2005-08-19T12:43:33Z

Pornography makes you go blind [NS via Mind hacks]

elfy85 @ 2005-08-18T15:52:00

2005-08-18T14:53:21Z

For once the Sun has something actually amusing - yesterday's edition included the headline "Madonna with ze big bruises". I also like the Daily Record's headline for last night's football - "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark... England".

elfy85 @ 2005-08-18T11:51:00

2005-08-18T10:55:01Z

Mmm, some rather nice new items at Elsewares this month - funky (and overpriced) ties, a more reasonably priced bracelet, and some very pretty shallow dishes. All still quite expensive though, and shipping is so much that even the really geeky but cheap Cat 5 bracelets and IDE belt are a bit too much really.

elfy85 @ 2005-08-15T12:49:00

2005-08-15T11:50:04Z

Work is still very dull, though slightly busier than last week. Feel free to email me during the day to keep me entertained - you should all know my gmail address...

elfy85 @ 2005-08-02T00:49:00

2005-08-01T23:53:17Z

I'm currently feeling very cultural and educated and stuff.

The Tompkins Table is out, and puts Catz top, which is an incredible achievement for a college that's never been that academic, and which has also won many sporting trophies this year. I can't really take any of the credit, having only got a 2:1, but I think my extra-curricular activities make up for that in terms of the bragging rights it gives the college.

And then this evening I've been to the opera to see Mussorgksy's Boris Godunov performed by the Kirov, which was excellent. I don't speak any Russian, so had a little difficulty following the story, but the music was superb. And at only £10 a ticket, for seats right in the centre near the back of the orchestra stalls, it was superb value too.

elfy85 @ 2005-07-27T10:17:00

2005-07-27T09:21:35Z

About to leave Devon to come back to London. Where Donnie Darko, West Wing season 5 and Golden Girls season 1 DVDs should be waiting for me. Yay.

book meme thing

2005-07-20T14:55:53Z

via owenblacker (hence the masses of HTML and CSS)

If you have read the whole book, bold it. If you have read part of the book, italicize it. Not bothering to mark the ones I own and haven't yet got around to reading, as I own almost every book on the list.

The Bible

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Koran

Arabian Nights

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Essays by Michel de Montaigne

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Ulysses by James Joyce

Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Candide by Voltaire

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Analects by Confucius

Dubliners by James Joyce

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Red and the Black by Stendhal

Das Capital by Karl Marx

Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Jungle by Upton Sinclair

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Diary by Samuel Pepys

Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

Color Purple by Alice Walker

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke

Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau

Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

The Talmud

Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Separate Peace by John Knowles

Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Red Pony by John Steinbeck

Popol Vuh

Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith

Satyricon by Petronius

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Black Boy by Richard Wright

Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George

Metaphysics by Aristotle

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

Sanctuary by William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig

Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown

Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines

Émile Jean by Jacques Rousseau

Nana by Émile Zola

Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck

Ox-Bow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle

The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatly Snyder

elfy85 @ 2005-07-19T12:34:00

2005-07-19T11:36:38Z

I'm slightly worried by this woman. She's finally passed her driving test - just, she got 15 minors, one more and she'd have failed - after 33 years, over 2,000 lessons, and over 40 attempts at the test. Unless she has a severe problem with nerves, there's no way she's safe to be on the roads.

elfy85 @ 2005-07-14T08:58:00

2005-07-14T08:00:15Z

Oooh, really cool idea. For those who aren't too hot with computers - a TUI (tangible user interface) using playing cards and poker chips to manage photo albums - chips represent months and years, one set of cards represent albums, the other represents commands and ways of managing the albums. Deal Me In (via We Make Money Not Art).

elfy85 @ 2005-07-07T20:27:00

2005-07-07T19:30:47Z

Two of my sister's housemates were on the train that was blown up between King's Cross and Russell Square. They didn't realise it was a bomb, thought it was a standard tube snafu and continued to go to work, slightly sooty but unharmed. In most places in the world, disabling the transport infrastructure would cause havoc; in London everyone is already used to finding alternative routes to get where they're going, and it's pretty much a normal day.