The image below can be perceived to be rotating clockwise or anti-clockwise. If you're seeing it rotate one way, it is possible to concentrate and “force” yourself to see it start rotating in the other direction.
Amusing optical illusion of the day
Tag: random shit
Note to self
Pink Floyd, like tea, makes everything better.
Yay, lesbians!
God, I'm easily amused when I'm debugging :)
Follow-up
As a follow-up to the previous post, dear readers. Please post comments with links to your favourite “office supplies” :)
A clear sign I have a twisted mind
Quick! Quick! Look at this thing and tell me what the first thing you think of!
I'm willing to bet that you didn't think the same thing I did…
A bit of background: I have a gel-filled wrist rest at work. It's black and boring and comfortable, but it sprung a leak so, once in a while, my wrist or some cables get smeared with sticky goo. Not pleasant.
After a bit of running around, I found the right secretary to ask for a new one and, lo and behold, 30 minutes later she came in with a large, shiny, rubbery, bluish thing that would not look out of place in a sex shop.
I feel weirded out and slightly aroused at the same time to have it on my desk.
I have a sick mind, I know.
A looooooong update
Our story, gentle reader, begins last friday.
It was time to get the furball's booster shots and get him vaccinated for feline leukemia at the same time. Initially, he was only supposed to be an indoor-only cat but since we're planning on letting him out once in a while, he needs that vaccine. We took our brave, strong cat to the vet. He didn't like it. He didn't like us either for the next few days and, to show his displeasure, he peed on the couch. Nice. We're letting him off this time, because the shots left him feeling really under the weather for about 36 hours. He's still a bit dopey at times, but he's getting back to his old annoying self.
That evening, Katy and I went to the pudding club at the pub. It was a glorious meal :) Initially, we weren't sure if we'd be able to go because we left it quite late to try and book a table. In fact, the dining room was indeed full up, but they were able to accommodate us in one of the side booths. It was probably nicer that way, to be honest, because we were quite alone and it was a nice ambiance to have a chat. The “light main” course turned out to be quite a hearty coq au vin (which was divine) and I don't even want to contemplate the number of calories we had trying out all those puddings. The new chef at the pub is a pastry chef and she's brilliant. We also got quite drunk (but just drunk enough). It was a fun night.
Saturday saw us going to Cromer for a beachfront day trip. It was a nice day and it wasn't. Traffic to get there was murder and it was just way too hot to be enjoyable. Cromer seems like a nice seaside town and I wouldn't mind going there again under more enjoyable conditions. I'd learned my lesson in Geneva about wearing a hat but I still managed to get a pisser of a sunburn on the back of my neck. I'm still a bit sore, but it's gradually going away. I have pictures of Cromer and they should be up shortly.
Sunday, Katy baked. A lot. A whole lot. She spent the day at it. The lemon cake was lovely (and is already gone) and the marbled cake has only been sampled once (and will probably be portioned out and frozen before it goes stale – it's huuuuuge!). I made a nice roast chicken dinner and we spent a slow day watching Heroes and Grey's Anatomy episodes that we'd taped earlier in the week.
Yesterday was my birfday (I'm now an old fogey at 32) and I was spoiled rotten.
Katy got me:
– a gift voucher for the Cambridge gliding club good for one towed flight to 2000 feet
– tickets to go see Avenue Q in London this weekend (and she booked us into a nice hotel in Mayfair)
– a thumbring 
– a book (You Suck!, by Christopher Moore)
– some chocolate
We had some homemade steak sandwiches with chips and Katy baked (yet again) some freshly-made profiterolles with artery-clogging double cream and dark chocolate. Hooah.
My parents and sister called me earlier in the day and tried to be subtle in telling me to go check my bank balance. I knew they'd said that they were going to pay part of my ticket to go to Canada in September but they went, shall be say, completely off the deep end :) I'm still in shock… THANK YOU!!!
I also got email from Michel last night and I hope to be able to resume our less-than-frequent phone chats with him this week.
Finally, on a purely silly note, I bought myself a SD card for my e-book reader (which, btw, Katy now approves of and wants one for herself :). The card itself is 32 x 24 x 2.1mm and weighs about 2 grams. This is how I got it this morning:
Also, for future reference, here is my flight information for my trip to Canadia:
Gatwick -> Ottawa:
Flight Zoom 411
Leaves Thu 13 Sep 07 14:15
Arrives Thu 13 Sep 07 16:40
Ottawa -> Gatwick:
Flight Zoom 710
Leaves Sun 23 Sep 07 22:55
Arrives Mon 24 Sep 07 10:30
I have no definitive plans yet, but I hope to see as many people as I can.
Events conspire to give me a message
First, I came across:
A bunch of geeks using solid state Tesla coils to play The 1812 overture and the Super Mario theme song .
Then, there was:
Greg Patillo, a beatboxing flute player (!), playing a unique rendition of the Super Mario theme song and the Sesame Street theme song
And then, when I went to go to the bathroom, I discovered a real-life garage band playing in the EBI underground parking lot. Apparently, they practice there during lunch time.
This makes me realize just how much I miss playing music.
Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war!
Meet the iGasm from Ann Summers, a sex toy that hooks up to your iPod and tweaks your hot spot in time to the beat of whatever is playing. Orgasm is assured and youd think most people would be satisfied with that but over at Apple theres a whole different kind of spasming going on.
The Trendy One does not want its shiny white ear stimulator associated with any other kind of stimulator, especially not the sticky kind. The cheeky promo material says:
“Go at it hard and fast with a pounding drum 'n' bass track or chill with ambient classic.”
Apples response to the iPod-esque poster has been to let loose the dogs of law, with a legal letter that concludes:
“We hope this request to remove it immediately will prevent us having to consider further action.”
Maybe Apples peeved because the iGasm puts a bigger smile on your face for £30 than its own, overpriced little white plaything.
From: Gizmondo
On what it means to be British…
I had a bit of a chat with one of the women who run the DiNA (one of the on-site cafes on campus). They go through about 15 boxes of teabags in a day. That's just them. Figure the same with Pebbles (the other cafe) and that means that there are roughly 3000 cups of tea sold every single day on campus. Now if you consider that there are maybe 1000 people on campus, that means an average of 3 cups of tea sold for everybody in a day.
This makes me smile for some reason.
Why was ths not available years ago when I was a lonely geek?
A Dutch escort agency Society Service has set up a special service for geek virgins looking for that elusive first sexual encounter. Sociology student Zoe Vialet set up the agency last year, Ananova reports, and admits she's had “a lot of demand from virgins” – most of them from the IT sector. She explained to De Telegraaf: “They are very sweet but are afraid of seeking contact with other people. They mean it very well but are very scared.”
Zoe has a crack team of five girls “specially trained” to pop geeks' cherries. However, those readers tempted to avail themselves of their charms are warned it's not just a case of stump up the cash, insert your floppy in the drive, eject and then off for a pizza.
Au contraire, you'll be expected to hone your skills over a extended period, as Vialet insisted: “Every booking lasts three hours minimum. Longer is possible, shorter not. We take the time to take a bath together, do a massage and explore each others body. When the date is over, you will have had a fantastic experience, and you will be able to pleasure a woman.”
And just in case you thought you might just try and get a real squeeze for a bit of mutual body-exploration, think again. Vialet warned: “You better practise before having a girlfriend. Woman expect men older than 30 having had some experience. Some men need a little bit of help. But it makes them happy and they are glowing .There is nothing more terrible than dying as a virgin.”
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/20/geek_service/