DamnSaxon

Hmm. I post a link (above) a few days ago about sixth sense, and within days I come across news that Southampton University has now demonstrated telepathy, too. At this rate, there'll be no "alternative science" at all soon. Mind you, they're only claiming a "bit rate" of 0.14 bits per second (7 seconds to send/receive a 1 or 0). A quick check on the calculator tells me that to transmit 1 kilobyte of information (i.e., a very small text file) this way would take a little over fifteen and a half hours - that's continuous, remember, no stopping for a cup of coffee, or a loo break to get rid of it again. So it will be awhile before we can use this method for "downloading" Hollywood's latest blockbuster. Don't uninstall your torrenting program just yet.

I must be old fashioned ... I thought chicken owners made chicken houses. Have you no old bits of wood, etc., lying around? It's right to think about planning permission though, as "there's always one" who'll make your life a misery if you don't.

Well, it's a strange and wondrous thing all right. It looks like a more-than-usually sophisticated, guitaroid synthesiser interface, judging from the sounds the musicians were making. Even tho' I'm an electronics enthusiast, I have reservations about how well any of these things will age. F'rinstance, go back about a century and think about the Theremin, or the ondes Martenot. You don't see many (any?) ondes Martenot outside of Messiaen's music, and I for one would not fancy my chances if someone asked me if I could find some new early-twentieth-century radio valves for his Theremin. If you base your new instrument on wood and metal and other low-tech materials, though, like traditional instruments, it would be repairable and playable pretty much indefinitely. Quite impressed, but I'll not be buying one. Even though I do have a CD of Theremin music, and a couple of recordings of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony.

Sorry, Njugle, only just saw your question. The answer is, I took my little bit of text to /ɯoɔ˙ɹoʇÉɹÇuÇƃʇxÇʇdılÉŸË™ÊÊÊ//:dʇʇɥ and they did it for me. Some characters cause problems, but mostly you're okay. Edit because I also only just noticed that Twerto got there well ahead of me. Oh, well. ˙ɥƃnoɥʇ `unÉŸ.

Here is a bit of good news for the alternative believer. Keep your sixth sense keen whilst reading it.

FWIW, the Independent is starting a campaign on energy prices generally. Not Shetland specific, but it's not good anywhere in the UK.

^ Cool programming, okay, but so depressing that it always has to be malicious. If I'd ever written a virus, it would have quietly defragged your hard drive in the background, or something useful like that. Out there in the all-too-real world, you get people who'll cheerfully encrypt your files and extort real money out of you to get them back. There's a definite difference of approach, methinks.

Coupon fairies. Other unexpected kindnesses welcome.

And not only Hotmail. We're all doomed.

^^^ Nice. About twice the price of mine, but then I don't get wind direction or a USB connection/ programmability so fair enough. If my experience is any guide, you'll spend the first several months checking it at every possible opportunity - this is, of course, to check the accuracy of its forecasts. Should it not last the winter ( ) at least there's a Shetlink thread to have a good moan on ( ), but have fun with it.

Or, since you have a PC, there are some very nice weather websites which can tell you more than you wanted to know. Some also offer "widgets" to decorate your desktop. My favourites include: Weather Underground Metcheck who have a Jet Stream page - nice. SAT24.com who have animations of satellite pics, also nice. I do have a weather station (OK, more than one, but then I don't live in Shetland (yet)), but know what you mean about the little wind speed whirligigs. I suspect that you could only get a Shetland-wind-proof one by spending rather a lot, though you can often buy replacement sensors for lesser models like mine. You can also develop an interest in radio and receive pictures direct from the satellites as they fly by. A bit hard-core maybe, but fun - even if your own pics are rubbish compared to the professional ones on the net.

Ah, the Botany thread. Must be the right place for this. Actually, there might not be a right place for it.

I've been using them for awhile now, starting one day when (our ISP) Virgin's DNS service was in a really foul mood, taking ages to find some addresses and completely failing with a timeout on others. The improvement in speed with OpenDNS was very noticeable - and that when compared with the ISP's usual speed, not the 'bad day' speed. Haven't looked back since, so here's one 'highly recommended' from a satisfied user.

A nice "accidental headline".

I'm inclined to agree with MJ - the radio series is definitive, and everything else (TV series, books, plays, you name it) followed from that. But yes - it's lost some of its freshness over the thirty years or so ( ) since it first arrived, for all us early adopters still love it. But, khit, if HHGG hasn't put you off science fiction-ish humour for good, get into Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (if you haven't already) - there are 30+ of the series now. It's a similar kind of intelligent humour, and even on re-reading them Pratchett's characters, and his descriptions, have me in tears of laughter. Also, Robert Sheckley's sci-fi, mainly his short stories, where things go wrong, people do stupid things, etc., not at all the usual science-worshipping take on sci-fi. Both authors have the DSSA (DamnSaxon Seal of Approval!).

Quite agree with you, Koy. That particular specimen makes my flesh crawl no matter what he says.

Ah, but then it's only 3 years, 2 months and 30 days (as I write) to the End of the Fifth Great Cycle, "civilisation", etc. (If this means nothing to you at all, search on "mayan calendar" and/or "2012". If even half the predictions are right, it's going to be quite a day.)

That BBC prog about "legal highs" was interesting, too. They made the point - actually, a drug-analysing professional made the point - that when something goes wrong for someone on illegal drugs, you know what drug they have taken (ignoring of course what it might have been cut with), so you can make a good guess at what treatment to give them. With the legal highs, it seems almost impossible even to find out what the active ingredient is, so when people have problems you literally don't know what to do. A valid point, that, and you can see why Guernsey is trying to ban the legal, unknown stuff from their shores. (Unfortunately, they apply the same restriction to real drugs.) But AT's right. Prohibition has succeeded in making drug use "glamorous" and "dangerous" to people at the sort of age when most of us want to rebel a bit, it's built a gigantic international business free of taxation but full of seriously nasty individuals, it has created major problems where there were none - even leading people to try totally unknown stuff, as above. In a word, failure. Whatever legalisation might bring, it could hardly be worse. (Edited almost immediately, as 'drugs' only has one 'u' )

^^^ You're quite right, of course, Para, but women of my acquaintance have been making much the same point for decades and nothing's changed. Plenty of women journalists do it themselves to female interviewees, which hardly helps. (he opined, reclining before his computer in faded jeans and a thin jumper which, however, did not quite hide the well-worn shirt he wore under it.) More WTFery. That beloved organisation, the European Union ( -> THIS IS, OF COURSE, AN IRONIC COMMENT <- ) just can't do enough to "look after" us, the Telegraph tells us here. So remember, now you've got those nice shiny new cameras snooping on you, not to let your behaviour become "abnormal" ... whatever exactly that might mean ...

In a word: Ebico. The UK's only not-for-profit energy supplier.

You've heard of "horse whispering"? Try this ... (NB, this site's been getting attacked a bit recently. If it's down, try later.)

Arrr, an' what do it be this comin' Satterday, yer lubbers? Clew: http://th106.photobucket.com/albums/m252/RiverIsMyGoddess/icons/th_smiley_pirate.gif Anybody know oo be benefitin' this year?

Hi, soupie, nice to have you along. And I'm certainly not going to say anything about stupidity, sounds like a pretty normal sort of day to me, or (faces grim reality and admits) would be if I were still, um, quite a bit younger than I am now. Now, if you'd been running riot and damaging stuff ... that would be horrendously stupid. Re your comment about brain chemistry, before anyone says it can't happen, it sounds just like one of my downstairs neighbours a few years ago. Uppers always left him down, in fact I actually saw him fall asleep once immediately after indulging in some crack, but enough heroin to put any normal human into a l-o-n-g sleep and he was ready to hit town. I've seen it, I know *exactly* what you mean. As for your privacy, I'll mention discreetly that I'm about 500 miles south of you for a start (though hoping ultimately not to be). Yep, even Shetland's forum is like an international postcard. Take care, DS

No, sorry, I really can't 'let that one go', either, shetlandpeat. I'm assuming that by 'doing the right thing' here you mean knowing how to behave decently in society, since the droning falsehood that "CCTV will help to cut street crime" has been pumped out of every governmental orifice as a "justification" for it for years. And, believe me, living in a city, I know that there seem to be a lot of people around these days who remind me of Rudolf Steiner's chilling comment that "towards the end of the present age there will be many people born without souls"; I'm not at all saying that there is no problem in the UK's streets. The infestation of every public space in the UK of snooping cameras, all linked back to some fortified bunker out of town, though, has nothing at all to do with street crime. As I've mentioned above in this thread, practically every study ever done on that topic concludes that CCTV has little, or no, impact on crime levels - but people who don't actually investigate the matter for themselves just assume that it must help, mustn't it? I mean. It's what they tell us. No, the infestation is just one of the more obvious parts of the surveillance dragnet which is being lowered over the population. It really shouldn't take too much of a leap of the imagination to link the system with the DNA database (and associated ID cards - how long before those become either compulsory or effectively so?), facial recognition software, the opening up to pretty much anyone in a uniform of all databases - banking, medical, you name it - without, of course, the trouble of notifying you, the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system which tracks people's vehicular movements and records all data for at least five years, even after it's obvious that you haven't committed any crimes, the new register to "protect" vulnerable people, featuring yet another database, this time one which treats malicious gossip as an acceptable substitute for truth ... the list goes on and on. And all linking it together shouldn't be that difficult - after all, the tyrants upstairs are doing all that linking for real, on a worryingly large scale, not just thinking about it. As for why all this is being done, well, I'd say follow up justlookin's observation about the EU, and read around the subject a bit. The "Lisbon Treaty" is going to be hammered into place irrespective of all opposition, no matter how factually based, because the plan (which is international) is among other things to reduce all Europe to, effectively, a collection of vassal 'regions', where you, as an ordinary citizen, will have only the 'right' to shut up and do as you're told. Few actual Brits are particularly responsible for this state of affairs, but what I can only call a series of traitorous governments have now broken up the UK. I'd love to think that the Irish vote next month would again say 'no' to all this, just for the frisson of hope it would give, but I fear that the 'yes' lobby have by now bought themselves victory. We, of course, don't even get the courtesy of a vote - not that it matters that much; as we used to say, "if voting changed anything they'd abolish it". European "integration" is getting the same sort of treatment as the question of whether Quebec should become officially French-speaking. Every time there's a vote on it, the public say 'no' ... so it comes back over and over again, until it gives the (predetermined) "right" result - the Quebecois call it the 'neverendum'. As for any practical results of CCTV in Shetland, I'd predict much the same as everywhere else. You'll get a few show trials, where some idiot (probably drunk) gets picked up for something damn stupid and made an example of, then when you're used to the cameras being there even those will fade away. And so another piece of civilian control apparatus has been quietly moved into place to be used against you. Oh, and before anyone accuses me of being a conspiracy theorist, you're quite wrong. I'm a conspiracy watcher, and one who is pretty damn angry about his country being stolen. (I can say damn, check my forum name. But no swearing, kids! )

Surprised no-one has mentioned this: more statistics of CCTV. And, since this statistic has been known since before Blair hit Downing St., perhaps someone could suggest a good reason why the Home Office has been spending (or "wasting", as we experts call it) three quarters of its budget on this particular technology all that time. As you guessed, I haven't changed my opinion on CCTV one bit, nor am likely to. But don't, like someone I was chatting to the other day, shine a cheap laser pointer into the cameras. "They" don't like that, and you tend to get lots of fellers in blue uniforms rushing to the scene to arrest you for the crime of "blinding the camera". Anyone know whether a model helicopter can lift an aerosol of paint?