http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

So, where's a good place to buy a sofa these days? Somewhere that has good construction quality, isn't too likely to go bust before delivering it [1], and has a decent range? I would want them to deliver to Cambridge (unless possibly they are IKEA in which case I'm willing to go get it).

[1] I do intend to pay by credit card to get some protection against this, but even if I get my money back in the event of a no-sofa-show, a wad of notes is uncomfortable to sit on compared to a sofa.

"Rat catcher" seems like a very Victorian job, but rats are still out there, and so are people who catch (or kill) them. Having had rats deposit some droppings and chew through a fire alarm cable in my house, I called out the local Council "pest control officer". He turned out to be a jolly chap who was all up for working on this problem, and he agreed I had rats, and put down some poison for them. He'll be back in a week to check if it got eaten or not. He certainly seemed like a man who knew his job and found it quite satisfying, and the council doesn't even charge extra for it.

Hopefully the rats either leave (permanently) or die before they chew through any more cables, particularly any live electric cables. I can do without a fire, even if the fire alarm is now working again!

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia considers giving away millions of copies of the Koran as aggressive proselytising. I do think they have a point here.

Meanwhile, millions of copies of the (Christian) Bible are distributed to proselytise, for example I tend to find one in almost every hotel room I stay in across the Western world with the intent of proselytising Christianity. I look forward to the North Rhine-Westphalian Office investigating them, also.

A set of examples of how to discourage people from looking at your Facebook entries (in places with a more developed set of anti-discrimination laws)

My company is still hiring programmers (you would code in Perl, but knowing it is not a requirement if you have general strong programming and analysis skills), sysadmins, DBAs, web and graphic designers, etc, etc. Most are in Amsterdam but the sysadmin and DBA jobs can be in Cambridge (and possibly developers if you're really, really good).

If you're interested please get in touch (I don't link who I work with on my LJ, but it's no secret in non-public communications).

Play.com now requires Verified by Visa (at least for a change of delivery address to one not used previous). So I think I'll be ordering from Amazon, even though I specifically went to Play to support an Amazon competitor. I won't easily suffer VfV.

Remember, if you want to compete with Amazon, you must not suck more than them.

(I know there are ways to avoid VfV, but (a) I haven't got round to implementing any of them and (b) that is not my point).

4 major releases and the vendor-supplied Bluetooth features in Android are still very poor.

(Yes I know there are apps. That is not the point, nor do they make it that much nicer anyway.)

So, it appears that almost no under-counter freezer you can buy today has an ice tray at the top of the freezer any more. A linear search of the display at a giant Currys shop discovered zero such freezers. Web-based research, focusing on frost-free freezers, discovered one: manufactured by Mièle, it is significantly more expensive than average.

It also appears that most retailers do not actually stock freezers in their stores.

Network Rail should just post a banner above the entrance to the London main stations saying "All hope abandon, ye who enter here".

My employer (who I prefer not to directly associate with my livejournal) is hiring UNIX sysadmins in Cambridge. It's a fairly good place to work with plenty to do and the resources to do it. If you're interested, email me or comment here.

... is looking left then turning right with equinamity.

I think The Day of the Triffids was written after John Wyndham saw an amaryllis.

I have two HP 61A Black LaserJet Toner Cartridges (C8061A) and two HP LaserJet 61X Black Toner Cartridges (C8061X) going free to a good home. These are for an HP4100 printer. Anyone interested?

The Hollywood "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is, impressively, good. It tells the story well, has little Hollywood saccharine, in fact even has the book's somewhat sad ending. The acting is good, the action is good, the sets are good.

It doesn't quite tell the same story as the Swedish film, but has parts of the book that the Swedish film does not - so it retells the book, not retells the film.

Recommended.

A fascinating article about octopus intelligence.

squeeeee

Excellent talk at LISA 2011!

When I see the EMC advertisements promising a bright new future of opportunities and ease when they "Accelerate your Journey to the Private Cloud", I am reminded of the scenes in Halo 2 where the Covenant Hierarchs are warbling about "Accelerating our journey into the Great Beyond".

The most highly evolved cats are tabby cats, because they have hairs which are different colours along the length of the same hair, meaning they will always clash on anything they are shed onto.

The Onion nails it

The most significant thing about Steve Jobs is that he worked as hard as necessary to make it as good as it could be.

Do you?

Why not?

I'll miss him.