Keep Your Shed Secure

Those of you not on Twitter may not have been aware that Farty Towers was burgled over the weekend, hence the not-keeping-up-with NaBloPoMo. Sorry.

Yes, they caught him and no, it was too late, he'd already sold our stuff. Jewellery, camera, ice axe (really), baby clothes (WTF?), booze. Weird thing was he'd picked up and moved, unopened, a bag labelled "Barclays Diamonds" containing LMF and DB's wedding rings. Those are now in a bank vault.

Anyway, the Crime Prevention Officer was here today and as part of his security advice, mentioned that garden forks and that are handy tools for breaking into a house, so you need to keep your shed secure too.

On the leaflet he left with us it says, "Recommend hostile/aggressive plants around perimeter fences and boundary walls".

What do you reckon?

Paved With Good Inventions

It says here that the best scientific invention of all time was the X-Ray machine. And the TV and mobile phone never even made the top ten? Sure...

More interestingly, No. 5 on the list is the V2 rocket. You know, the successor to the Doodlebug. The one that killed thousands in London during the Blitz and thousands more prisoners of war during its manufacture. Great invention, that. Who made up the shortlist, Adolf Hitler?

Also, hands up who's even heard of the Pilot Ace Computer? Exactly. I call shenanigans.

My own top five inventions for their "impact on the past, present and future"?

1. The Time Machine. Because I wanna fight Morlocks.


2. The Faster-Than-Light Drive. Saves all that hassle of waiting years to get to your destination.


3. The Anisokinetic Punch. Transmits force through a 90° angle. Pretty cool.


4. Soylent Green. Tasty and nutritious, yum!


5. Multivac. The greatest computer ever, except for maybe Deep Thought.

Who said they had to be real?

Living In The Future

Busted - The Year 3000.

So I went to the future but it wasn't so great. All of the chicks, although pretty fine, turned out to be my own great-great-great-grand-daughters. Which kinda sucked.

The Earth had had its axis straightened so that we could have BST all year round, but that had melted what was left of the polar ice caps and put all the ski instructors out of a job.

The Earth was, of course, flooded, but that was ok because the scienticians had worked out how to give everybody gills so they could live underwater. Oh, and since people were pretty bored with eating fish every day, they'd bio-engineered squid to taste like chicken.

Oh and Jedward's seventh album had gone multi-platinum, so it was just as well that ears had been done away with. Innit?

Vapourware

So the Merkan military-industrial complex are refurbishing their Trident nucular weapons for our UK nucular submarines (once the damage has been repaired) but they have hit a tiny snag.



They've got plenty of plutonium.



They've managed to source a DeLorean DMC-12 that can still just about reach 88mph.



But they've totally lost the plans for one vital component.



It's a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank.



Better known as a Flux Capacitor.



Without it, their nucular missiles are nothing more than fancy doorstops.



Or worse.



All the scienticians involved in the original design have either died, retired or "moved on".



Where's Marty McFly when you need him?

Computer Terms Illustrated #20 - Burns Special

Apparently it's some sort of anniversary today. But how to commemorate this momentous occasion?

How else?

Spywear

A Series of Pipes

Hidden features

Interlock

Bit, Byte

System Flags

Hardware Clash

Float:Right

Cache

Bloatware

Wetware

Technical Support

Jings, crivvens and help ma boab the noo, it's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht, lang may yer lum reek wi' ither folks' coal, up yer kilt, is that a skean dhu in yer sporran or are ye jist pleased tae see me, och aye, ye ken, etc.

Prisoner No More

Number 6 has finally escaped from The Village.

Patrick McGoohan 1928-2009BCNU

Update: Stoopid fonts. If you have both Internet Explorer and The Village font, this page ought to look like this:

Doesn't seem to work in Firefox.

Moving Pictures

So last night I was banished from Farty Towers for the evening, as Mrs F had a medium coming over to fleece her and her girlfriends hold a séance. Not the world's best psychic, I must point out, as she was due to bring her weegie board last weekend but had to cancel at the last minute due to unforeseen circumstances. Way to go, Derek Acorah! I think the reason I was expelled had something to due with malign influences aka uncontrollable laughter, which can understandably be a bit of a distraction when you're trying to summon the devil. Or whatever.

So I went to the cinema. The first one I visited had naff all on that I even remotely wanted to see, so I stormed out in a huff and went to the Odeon. While I was in the lobby deciding what to watch, my attention was caught by a poster for the upcoming Keanu Reeves remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I won't spoil it for you, in case you haven't seen the original 500 times already, but I'm pretty sure the Earth doesn't literally stand still, cos that would make everything fly off into space which would be expensive to shoot. And a bit sad.

Anyway, with both John Cleese and Kathy Bates in the cast, this film can't help but be totally awesome. Or crud, I can't decide. It depends which of them plays Gort the giant killer robot. I suppose Bates is a bit on the chubby side for the part, but then I saw Cleese in a wheelchair last week at Prince Jugears' birthday bash, so that kind of rules him out too. Although he may have been hamming it up. Hmmm.

I hope it is Cleese; I'd love to see him do his silly giant killer robot walk while shooting laser beams out of his eyes because that would, I think you'll agree, be totally awesome ¹.

Then I watched Avi And Britt Make A Porno, which was kind of weird, but very, very funny. Go see it.



¹ Sorry for overusing the word "awesome" in this post, but if you'd ever had kittens pee in your suitcase, you'd understand ².

² And if you still don't understand, you need to get out more.

Summer Caption Competition

Be it pleaseth yowe, Maistre Geoffrey Chaucer hath inspiredd me with his chronicle ycleped Doctor Hwaet and the Daneleks. It hath been wandering arounde mine head for monthes, lyke unto Marco Polo on his travelles.

Any road uppe, Ich haue effected an peynture depicting an Danelek Shippe, but Ich am at an compleat losse for a suitably sombre title.

Et this ys where yowe, gentil reedere, can make yower owne contributione!

Alle yowe have to doo ys to provide yower suggestiones in ye usual place; Ich shall runne an totallye fayre refferendumme to fynd the moost popular one and poste it yn mine blogge. There shalle be an pryze of an actual moving, talking Danelek. (Paynture not to scale, Companion not included.)
Prize ⇒
Competition ⇓



So putte on yower thynking cappes! Competicioun closeth on Vendredi, Juin 20, 2008. Goode Lucke!

Warriors From Another World

Huge they were. Huge and terrible. They had evil in their eyes, but it's the sound of their voices that'll haunt me to the end of my days. That screaming, deafening ululation, going on and on all around us as if it would never, ever end. The captain had told us they were unthinking beasts, that we could easily defeat them, but he was wrong, so wrong.

Only the gods know from whence they came, what unimaginable distances they must have travelled to end up here in our world. What vast ships they must have built to ferry themselves here! Why did they come? What could our home possibly have to offer them? How did they even learn of our existence? So many questions...

And now they are on our very doorstep! The empire that we spent so long building, nurturing over the centuries, will surely crumble into dust before their assault. They are unstoppable. With my own eyes, I saw men ripped limb from limb in their, their, I don't even have a name for those...pseudopods? Our weapons were useless against their impenetrable skin; they needed no armour to protect them.

The captain said they were led here by humans, traitors to mankind working in league with those, those monsters. But who would be mad enough to trust alien creatures? Once they reach their goal, they shall simply trample their erstwhile allies into the ground, for there can be no reasoning with them.

You may think I've gone mad, but you have to believe me, every word I tell you is true! Do what you must to get the news back to our leaders. They are coming!

Black Monitor

In Loving Memory
Arthur Charles Clarke
16 December 1917 - 18 March 2008