Lone Sentry
Pictures and information from the European theatre in World War 2.
Daily archives: March 5, 2004
Hanging up the rubber suit
As Brian reported a few weeks ago, the original Godzilla is finally making it to the west uncut. There have been 27 other ‘Gojira’ movies, and this summer’s Godzilla: Final Wars could be the last.
Doctors Evil
The Academy of Medical Sciences has published a report suggesting that the price of alcohol be doubled in an attempt to curb booze related health problems. All I can do is to get all Harry Enfield and go OI! AMS!! NO!!! Let’s face it, the rise in depression, and the damage to the economy, would be more harmful and in more ways than the problem they’re trying to solve.
Edit: What is it about the female physiology that means they have a lower weekly limit (2/3rds the male amounts on the graphs accompanying the report) for recommended alcohol consumption? I can see that the laydeez are on average smaller than blokes, but does this affect liver function? Or is it just a male doctor thing that they have to protect the pretty little things from themselves?
Anyone know a good pheasant recipe?
Fallowfield’s bird population is now a bit brighter, thanks to a Chinese Golden Pheasant in the grounds of the USDAW union headquarters.
Perspective
Until I get the galleries re-booted I’m going to put resized PhotFriday images here in the blog. This week, Perspective.
Every where you go, always take your PC with you
Via Tom’s Hardware I’ve discovered the joy of Knoppix. It’s a Linux distribution that boots off a CD without touching your hard drives. A cd-rom drive and some memory is all it ever needs. Klaus Knopper (it’s creator) has really hit on a good idea here. All you need to do is download the CD image (.iso) and burn it on a disk. A capsule review follows:
The good
On my system it goes from boot to desktop in about 2 minutes including detecting hardware. It’s got web browsers, email clients, office software (office xp compatible), media players, a CD-ROM burner and a bunch of other stuff I’ve haven’t explored yet. You can make custom Knoppix builds with the apps and drivers you want.
The bad
Configuring my Alcatel Speedtouch (the most common ASDL modem in the UK) is a real ball-ache but eventually it will work. It doesn’t detect the mouse in my shiny new MS wireless desktop (in defense it’s brand new gear and my old USB mouse and the new wireless keyboard do work from boot).
The ugly
There is no ugly . Ok, the ASDL modem thing is a drag and the current version can’t write to NTFS volumes but it reads them without problems.
End game
It does what it says on the tin. This is an OS that will boot from a CD on a box without a working system disk and give a you a good GUI afterwards. Even if you’re not into Linux you have to admit that this makes it a damn powerful (and cheap) data recovery tool. The customisation possibilities mean you can build your own virtual PC on a CD that will boot on any relatively modern hardware.
Google challenge
Something Alan and I dreamt up earlier today whilst taking pictures of reservoirs.
Choose a subject and I will spend an hour or so researching it on Google (and following those strange link trails that take you to somewhere new) and then post about what I’ve found and a whole load of related links.
Stick your suggestions in the comments. I’ll do the first non sexual one that gets put forward.
Hot or Not
The guys who brought the world Hot Or Not, have extended their system to include blogs. Of course, I had to participate.