nutty's stag night

just want to say a big thank you to my mates for a great evening. 

i love you all.

and 'cutty'-wise, the really good news was that there was absolutely no vex'in.

...i'll be dealing with bheesh's absence from nutty's stag night in a separate blog.

clash of the titans

today, the sporting world's biggest match up isn't in baseball, or even tennis at wimbledon.

no, it's tri-nations rugby and australia vs. new zealand.

given new zealand's form, i'm giving this one to the all-conquering all blacks.

update: australia 20- new zealand 15

the photo above is of new zealand's rugby team performing the haka in 1905.

for a great site on the history and a tribute to rugby, visit:

http://rugby-pioneers.blogs.com/

below: Staniforth provided the finishing touch to a superb attacking move.

Apple's iPhone makes it to stores

how desperate to be cool are you?

Some people have been queuing for days outside Apple and AT&T stores across the US to ensure they get hold of one of the devices.

Hundreds more began queuing during the day because stores will not start selling the iPhone until 1800 local time (2300 BST).

Car bomb found in central London (make that two)

wow.

a lot of factors played a role in averting catastrophes here. including luck.

no matter what the politicains around the world may say, it's impossible to stop terrorists from striking. you can only get lucky so many times.

sooner or later societies will have to face up to the root causes of terrorism as opposed to blindly trying to stamp it out.

people aren't strapping explosives to themselves because they're bored with what's on tv...

it's really strange, but you never hear of terrorist attacks in, say switzerland, for instance, do you?

...perhaps that's because the swiss don't: 

(insert your own reasoning & rationale here) 

just a thought.

Blair resigns as prime minister

Tony Blair has stood down as UK prime minister after 10 years in the job.










He handed in his resignation to the Queen during a private meeting at Buckingham Palace.

His long-serving Chancellor Gordon Brown is now at the Palace where the Queen is asking him to take the job and form a new government.

...failure to be his own man.

failure to push the united states on climate change.

failure to put any pressure on the warmongering idiot in the whitehouse means tony blair will have a tainted legacy.

middle east peace envoy? a brit who rubber-stamped george bush's disaster in iraq? yeah, that should work for everyone in the middle east...

nobody messes at my pool party

victorious scrabble swimming

don't see this outside of your bedroom window every day.

(click on image for larger view)

technical info:

canon eos 30d with a canon efs 17-55mm f/2.8 usm lens at 17mm.

iso 100, 1/200 sec at f/7.1

06/23/07
09:19 am

study the bible & become stupid

that's great, love, but do you really think it's a good idea to sit in a chair in the sea with your laptop?

and exactly how do you mange to read the screen, because i actually understand something about light and optics, and i know for a fact that all that reflected light coming off the sea means that it's virtually possible even see the computer screen. and where's her wireless connection?

like the rest of the bible, apart from historical fact:

false hope & bollocks.

see:
http://www.oneyearbible.net/

e-mail to UPS - what can brown do for you...?

hello,

i would like to know how a package that arrives in laurel, maryland because of a late train at 5:15am, sits there all day, and doesn't has a departure scan until 5:15pm, but where's it going to go?

because laurel, maryland is only 20 miles away, so how come it's going to take 3 more days to get my package?

not exactly the service your tv adverts would have us believe, is it? because according to them, you can get a package delivered across continents in a single day, but it apparently will take UPS 3 days to go just 20 miles according to your online tracking information.

Vatican has Ten Commandments for drivers

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican on Tuesday issued a "Ten Commandments" for motorists to keep them on the road to salvation, warning drivers against the sins of road rage, abuse of alcohol or even simple rudeness.

The unusual document from the Vatican's office for migrants and itinerant people also warned that automobiles can be "an occasion of sin" — particularly when used to make a dangerous passing maneuver or when used by prostitutes and their clients.

And it suggested prayer might come in handy — performing the sign of the cross before starting off and saying the rosary along the way. The rosary was particularly well-suited to recitation by all in the car, it said, since its "rhythm and gentle repetition does not distract the driver's attention."

...since the pope stands up in a boring, slow-moving chariot, just so he can show off his papal robes, the catholic church has a long-standing history of being in touch with the modern world & hasn't ever been embroiled in moral misgivings involving choirboys and members of the clergy, etc...fucking hypocritical bastards.

ah, the catholic church. there's a real winner! last time i checked, there weren't hundreds of legal cases of sexual abuse against children by atheists...

so, in a full two fingered salute, i give the vatican church the original -

ten blokey commandments!

The Ten Blokey Commandments

1. Thou shalt not wear tights

2. Thou shalt not wear luminous clothing

3. Thou shalt not act like a girl…

4. …Yet thou shalt covet hot girls

5. Thou shalt not cock-block

6. Thou shalt not becometh a fat Christian

7. Honour a good beer with thine mates

8. Thou shalt not turn down the bass

9. Thy shalt indulge in sporting passions

10. Leave thine basement

nutty @ drum & bass party at #501, july 3^rd & 4^th, 2005


...or in other words, why don't dont you shut the fuck up, and put your own house in order before telling everybody else how to live their lives.

update:

i just found an e-mail for the vatican, so i've just sent them the ten blokey commandments :)

VATICAN PUBLISHING HOUSE (LEV)

e-Mail: lev@lev.va

i've got photo fever!

while i was waiting for the sky to darken and to get a shot of the moon, i took this shot of a bus and people at 16th & mass. ave. from our bedroom window.

(click on image for full size)

technical info:

canon eos 30d with a canon ef 70-200mm f/2.8 l usm lens at 200mm + 1.4x extender.

orion skyview pro mount.

iso 100, 6 secs at f/11, - 1/3 stop

06/20/07
20:59pm

first astro photo taken with our new camera

not too bad considering it's from our bedroom window.

(click on image for full size)

technical info:

canon eos 30d with a canon ef 70-200mm f/2.8 l usm lens at 200mm + 1.4x extender.

orion skyview pro mount.

iso 400, 1/160 sec at f/4.0, -1/3 stop.

06/20/07
21:51pm.

Truck Bomb Hits Baghdad Mosque, and 61 Are Killed

BAGHDAD, June 19,€” A suicide bomber barreled a truck filled with cooking gas and explosives into a square bordered by a large Shiite mosque in the heart of Baghdad on Tuesday, just as worshipers were finishing midday prayers. The Interior Ministry said at least 61 people were killed and 130 wounded.

Many Iraqis, beleaguered at every turn, said they saw the bomb as an attempt to aggravate sectarian strife and as one more piece of evidence that the Americans could not protect them from extremists. Many of those who live near the site of the destruction said they had concluded that the Americans must be helping the suicide bombers.

"€œThe Americans know everything, they can do everything, they can repair the space shuttle without touching it, why do they let these things happen here in Iraq?"€ said Abu Muhammad, 55, one of the custodians of the bombed mosque.

...i'd say that's a pretty fair question for someone to ask who has seen his country suffer four years of bloodshed, his friends killed and torn apart, and all because the united states decided it didn't want saddam hussein in power any more.

flyover tonight of the international space station

...lucky for us that it's cloudy, so we won't see a bloody thing...

you can find out what's going on in the skies above by logging onto this site:

http://www.heavens-above.com/

FBI tries to fight zombie hordes

from the bbc:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/67528

The FBI is contacting more than one million PC owners who have had their computers hijacked by cyber criminals.

The initiative is part of an ongoing

project to thwart the use of hijacked home computers, or zombies, as launch platforms for hi-tech crimes.

The FBI has found networks of zombie computers being used to spread spam, steal IDs and attack websites.

The agency said the zombies or bots were "a growing threat to national security".

Signs of trouble

The FBI has been trying to tackle networks of zombies for some time as part of an initiative it has dubbed 'Operation Bot Roast'!.

as you can clearly see from the photos above, i think i may already be a victim...are these not a couple of hot asses?

Sam Perlozzo dismissed as Orioles's manager

from mlb.com

BALTIMORE -- With the Orioles mired in an eight-game losing streak, the club decided it was time for a change.

Orioles executive vice president of baseball operations Mike Flanagan announced at a press conference Monday at Camden Yards that manager Sam Perlozzo had been replaced on an interim basis by bullpen coach Dave Tremble.

...that's great, because i've been watching these games and it's the bullpen that's been imploding, along with the bats not hitting. starting pitching has been holding up until the seventh or eighth inning and then in comes certain defeat from the bullpen who couldn't manage to strike out a blind ten-year old with his hands tied behind his back.

so what does the front office do? sack the manager who isn't throwing  the baseball and replace him with the guy responsible for the very same bullpen that has the collective baseball ability of a bucket of plastic bricks. 

...fucking brilliant.

america's pastime:

the fields are of different sizes. no testing of amphetamines until recently. the player-unions agree on suspensions set. franchises are uprooted and sold. no salary cap, so we all know which same teams will feature every year in the playoffs. the barry bonds home run fiasco. the so-called world champions don't even compete in international competition...

and las but not least the hall of fame. 

why does america sports have to keep patting itself on the back? other countries don't have hall of fames for their sports. and they compete in international competition...

america's pastime is nothing more than a sporting joke.

america's pastime is the nfl.

Hamilton on pole at US Grand Prix

alright, can he make it seven?

he's already rewritten all the record books. he's already done what no driver has ever done before, and the fact that he's from england makes it even better.

the united states will probably not 'enjoy' a formula 1 grand prix for very much longer.  only one driver (scott speed - who can't seem to finish a race without crashing into someone) and the tv network's obsession with the incredibly fucking boring, redneck nascar (yawn), means that i give it a maximum of two years before f1 disappears from america and international motorsports and the united states grow ever further apart.

if lewis hamilton mangages a top 3 finish it will be amazing. if he wins, it will be incredible (and will not make his world champion team mate alonso very happy)

...there's also world superbikes going on in italy.

the move to safari

as from now, i'm using safari as my default windows browser.

nothing wrong with mozilla's firefox, but i really like apple's appearance and now they have a windows browser, i have no reason not to use it.

http://www.apple.com/safari/

Wylie

team nutty update

boinc project user stats by project:




















team nutty is ranked 837 in the united states,

4,662 in the world,

726 in the world for climateprediction.net

13,534 for seti. (i have just stopped participating in seti after 3 years to concentrate on climate prediction and the einstein projects).

1,331 for einstein@home

p.s. i spent 10 fucking minutes trying to put a simple table on blogger (with no luck - blogger simply refuses this morning to accept anything with tabs). you think blogging is easy? sometimes it's like having a blind, deaf dog that's incontinent, and barking yourself.

mind you, it is only 7 in the morning, and i have been alcohol-free since our memorial day afternoon martini-party at lima...

another cup of PG-Tips is in order i think!

Naked riders promote pedal power

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6736969.stm

About 700 cyclists in various states of undress have cycled through central London in another leg of the World Naked Bike Ride.

The naked cyclists - and others with strategically-placed body paint, sticky tape or bum bags - were highlighting the damage caused by car dependency.

...right, i'm er, just off for a ride down 17th st....

the absurd contradiction of what it is to be human...

POACHERS have shot the last two white rhinos in Zambia, killing one and wounding the other, in a night operation at the Mosi-Oa-Tunya national park.

The shooting of the two endangered animals in a heavily-guarded zoological park near Victoria Falls in Zambia's tourist resort town of Livingstone took place last week.

"I can confirm that one of the white rhinos was shot dead by suspected poachers. The other one was wounded and is undergoing treatment," said Maureen Mwape, spokesperson of the Zambia Wildlife Authority, which would be investigating the shooting.

The dead female rhino's horn was apparently removed.

Zambia's white rhinos were all killed by poachers but the government managed to acquire six from South Africa in 1993, of which the injured male is the last to survive.

...anyone fancy a bet on what our chances are of our present civilization actually surviving in its present form for the next 500 years?

how can we be so clever and yet so stupid?

can lewis hamilton make it six in a row?

today fox will be showing the canadian grand prix live at 1:00pm.

















never mind that fox has no idea how to show a grand prix (good news, it's a syndicated speed channel presentation), lewis hamiton has a real chance of winning the first race of his career and adding to his already record-breaking list of formula one top three finishes by a rookie driver.

he is special, no doubt about it, and has a team in mclaren that can win the championship; a very rare combination for a rookie driver to have entering motorsports highest, most demanding level of international competition (sorry nascar).

update> lewis hamilton wins the canadian grand prix!

in an action-packed grand prix whose only downside involved a colossal impact by robert kubica who looked to get very badly banged up, the super aguri honda driven by takuma sato overtook the mclaren of fernando alonso in the last two laps of the race. this is the smallest team in formula one with a budget of $30 million that didn't even exist a year ago (mclaren has a budget of some $400-500 million).

amazing race.

holy fuck! - All Blacks thrash France 61 - 10

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/6721229.stm

despite missing top players because of a calender clash, this is france's biggest international loss.

is there anybody left who doesn't now think the all blacks are favourites to lift the world cup? france might make it through to the finals and might even make it all the way as the tournament is being played in france, but french supporters will surely be hoping for a miracle every time when these mauri all blacks take to the french soil.

new camera!

since daisy and i are flying off to alaska on a once in a lifetime trip next month to get married, we thought we'd better take some decent photos of our glacier-trekking, grizzly bear-watching, alaskan wildlife safari, helicopter flightseeing, whale-watching extravaganza, so we just bought a new digital camera.

it's a canaon eos 30d, and it's a great piece of kit. straight out of the box on fully auto mode it takes great photos.

i've had decent photography gear in the past (nikon), but i am a complete novice to digital photography, so i've a lot to learn. luckily, photography basics don't change, but i'm very rusty, so i'm going to need to get clicking and get my head back into all that stuff.

...i reckon it will take me a month to learn how to use it properly so i can hopefully begin to get the most out the many photo ops we'll have.

G8 climate deal signals a breakthrough

from the bbc:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6732787.stm
It is full of political wriggle-room, it does not send clear signals for business investment and it offers no certainty that the climate will be saved from irreversible damage - but for all these failings, the G8 summit looks like a breakthrough in the long Euro-American stand-off over climate policy.

...yeah, it's a breakthrough alright, to have some 'talks'.

instead of bush having press conferences about holding talks by the end of his term of office and so conveniently leaving it all up to somebody else to figure out so he doesn't have to deal with any actual responsibility, because as we all know, the economy is more important than everything else...the only one i want to hear about with regard to climate change is not what he is going to do tomorrow, but what he actually fucking did yesterday.

in the 1970's the world's biggest economy suffered two huge shocks from the oil crisis, and yet amazingly, market forces always dictate that no matter what, strong, capital economies always bounce back. for him to proclaim that the world's largest industrialised & biggest polluter's economy is somehow more important than begin setting mandatory caps on its emissions is simply immoral.

stange that, given that this administration is trying so very hard to ram christianity down everyone's throats.

what a legacy this asshole will leave behind.

evolution: topic of GOP debate

believe it or not, there are people running for the highest office of this country that don't believe in mankind's second most successful scientific theory:

from the recent GOP debate:

...The issue of evolution once again surfaced when Huckabee was asked if he believes the biblical "story of creation." During the last debate, Huckabee, Brownback and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo all raised their hands, signifying they didn't believe in evolutionary theory. During the third debate, Huckabee at first said the question was unfair, because if elected president he wouldn't be writing science curriculum.

"But you’ve raised the question, so let me answer it. 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.' To me it’s pretty simple -- a person either believes that God created this process or believes that it was an accident and that it just happened all on its own," Huckabee said. "... I believe there is a God who was active in the creation process. Now, how did He do it, and when did He do it, and how long did He take? I don’t honestly know, and I don’t think knowing that would make me a better or a worse president.

"... [I]f I’m selected as president of this country, [Americans will] have one who believes in those words that God did create. And as the words of Martin Luther, 'Here I stand. I can do no other.' And I will not take that back."

Following a follow-up question, Huckabee said, "... if anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to."

Brownback gave his thoughts on man's origins by citing the 11th-century Archbishop of Canterbury Anselm's famous phrase, "faith seeking reason." The debate was held at Saint Anselm College.

"One of the problems we have with our society today is that we put faith and science at odds with each other," Brownback said. "They aren’t at odds with each other. If they are, check your faith or check your science."

McCain, who during the last debate said he believed God guided evolution, said the teaching of creationism in schools is "up to the school districts."

"But I think that every American should be exposed to all theories," he said. "But I can’t say it more eloquently than Pastor Huckabee -- Gov. Huckabee just did, and I admire his description, because I hold that view. The point is that [during] the time before time, there’s no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today."

...i don't know what the democrats are doing, but i only hope they are plotting some way in which they can somehow force these idiots to watch the southpark double episode on the teaching of evolution. this is a one of their very best, a veritable tour-de-force, with richard dawkins getting off with the 'evolution is nonsense' sex-change teacher, who is shown being given it to from behind from dawkins, screaming "yeah, baby, pound my monkey butt-hole!"

bastard pc monitors...

our pc monitor died a couple of days ago. wouldn't you know it, the bugger was less than one month out of it's warranty...

it's replacement is a dell 20" widescreen. this time we're getting the extra two years extended warranty...

$380.00 for a 20" lcd flat panel with a five year warranty. done, (we hope).

Rossi wins sixth Italian moto GP

valentino rossi showed the world why he is the most talented rider on two wheels yesterday with a thrilling display of his ability in mugello, italy.

85,000 screaming italian fans saw their hero beat that miserable spanish dwarf, danny pedrosa, who never looks happy in the interviews afterwards. first thing rossi did was to give barros a big bear-hug for finishing 3rd. nobody likes pedrosa.

rossi had the slowest bike of the top three riders, pedrosa weighs the same as a large rabbit, alex barros's ducati was at least 10kph faster down the main straight, yet still 'the doctor' gave it to them.

a special week of racing

take an on-bike lap of the TT circuit, etc. click on the links where it says 'see also' to the right of the page.
(turn up the sound)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/isleofman/tt/tt_tour.shtml
it's the isle of man TT week. 100 years old this week.

no other road racing course in the world comes close, or is this dangerous.

click on the bbc link and get a hint of what it's like to be on a racing motorcycle at 180 mph on a lap of the famous TT circuit.

...i doubt any of these chaps order pomegranate martinis at 'lima!'