Links of the fortnight
Yesterday my Mac suddenly lost the ability to connect to the internet. I thought this meant that our ADSL was down, or the router had crashed (we've been having fairly lousy connectivity the past few days), but rebooting the router didn't help. It later transpired that I had perfectly fine connectivity from the eeePC. After trying various sensible things myself, I waited for Richard to get home - and it turned out the Mac's keychain had randomly corrupted itself. People who know about Macs say this is a Bad Thing.
The thing is, I'm sure that usually when users go to tech support people and say "I haven't done anything to the computer, it just stopped working", usually they have changed something and forgotten about it. In this case, I hadn't done anything at all. Half an hour previously, it worked. Then suddenly, it didn't. Huh.
I really need to clear out some of the tabs that are sitting around in my browser waiting for me to write about them. But I still don't have a lot of energy, so anything I say will be brief.
Videos:
Topless Robot: I Would Not Like to Fight 300 Naked Orcs, Personally. A load of level 1 characters in World of Warcraft teamed up to attack one of the toughest bosses in the game. The video is hilarious even if you don't know anything about WoW (as long as you're vaguely aware of video games in general, I suppose).
Sparkfun: Yarn Monster. Richard found this on Sparkfun's site and told me I should link it for all my knitting friends. It's a robot that turns messy yarn into neat balls. Awesome!
Storycorps: Q & A. Animation drawn over a real-life soundtrack of a 12 year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome interviewing his mother. May require tissues, may be triggery (e.g. if you are on the autistic spectrum and do not have such a loving, accepting parent).
Top Five Panda Cheese commercials. Very odd TV adverts for an Egyptian cheese, featuring an utterly adorable panda. Or is he?
Articles:
Fire and Ice on a Platter. I can't remember quite how I found this, but it's an article about the science behind the dessert Baked Alaska. It's very interesting for cooks and science-types alike.
Autism's First Child. Article about/interview with the first person ever to be diagnosed as autistic.
BBC News: A Real Good Samaritan and Your Good Samaritan stories. It made me cry.
Bad Science: Putting a number in its context. The rebuttal to the rather scary recent news story that 600 women had become pregnant despite the contraceptive implant. On a similar note, A new and interesting form of wrong. What's wrong with the recent Stonewall report that “the average coming out age has fallen by over 20 years”.
Silliness:
WALRUS ALLERGIES ARE A SERIOUS ISSUE. From sherlockbbc_fic.
The thing is, I'm sure that usually when users go to tech support people and say "I haven't done anything to the computer, it just stopped working", usually they have changed something and forgotten about it. In this case, I hadn't done anything at all. Half an hour previously, it worked. Then suddenly, it didn't. Huh.
I really need to clear out some of the tabs that are sitting around in my browser waiting for me to write about them. But I still don't have a lot of energy, so anything I say will be brief.
Videos:
Topless Robot: I Would Not Like to Fight 300 Naked Orcs, Personally. A load of level 1 characters in World of Warcraft teamed up to attack one of the toughest bosses in the game. The video is hilarious even if you don't know anything about WoW (as long as you're vaguely aware of video games in general, I suppose).
Sparkfun: Yarn Monster. Richard found this on Sparkfun's site and told me I should link it for all my knitting friends. It's a robot that turns messy yarn into neat balls. Awesome!
Storycorps: Q & A. Animation drawn over a real-life soundtrack of a 12 year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome interviewing his mother. May require tissues, may be triggery (e.g. if you are on the autistic spectrum and do not have such a loving, accepting parent).
Top Five Panda Cheese commercials. Very odd TV adverts for an Egyptian cheese, featuring an utterly adorable panda. Or is he?
Articles:
Fire and Ice on a Platter. I can't remember quite how I found this, but it's an article about the science behind the dessert Baked Alaska. It's very interesting for cooks and science-types alike.
Autism's First Child. Article about/interview with the first person ever to be diagnosed as autistic.
BBC News: A Real Good Samaritan and Your Good Samaritan stories. It made me cry.
Bad Science: Putting a number in its context. The rebuttal to the rather scary recent news story that 600 women had become pregnant despite the contraceptive implant. On a similar note, A new and interesting form of wrong. What's wrong with the recent Stonewall report that “the average coming out age has fallen by over 20 years”.
Silliness:
WALRUS ALLERGIES ARE A SERIOUS ISSUE. From sherlockbbc_fic.